Brave Search beta(search.brave.com)
search.brave.com
Brave Search beta
https://search.brave.com/
686 comments
> I mean, DDG worked fine for 95% of time, but the remaining 5% failure often led to some extreme frustration that I just couldn't stand.
Is 95% really not acceptable?My experience is quite different though. When I don’t get the results I hoped I just use !g. Easy. But the result are rarely any better
Is 95% really not acceptable?My experience is quite different though. When I don’t get the results I hoped I just use !g. Easy. But the result are rarely any better
Honestly the main reason I ended up abandoning DDG is because you can't see the publish date on search results.
I know it's a fairly minor feature and one manipulated often by some websites, but I've still found it massively increases my chances of picking a relevant and up to date result. I didn't even realise how much I used it until I found myself getting extremely frustrated about its absence in DDG.
I know it's a fairly minor feature and one manipulated often by some websites, but I've still found it massively increases my chances of picking a relevant and up to date result. I didn't even realise how much I used it until I found myself getting extremely frustrated about its absence in DDG.
I used to do this, but at some point I just stopped. Google is not better than DDG. More SEO spam and much more hostile UX.
Brave has a culture of user-hostile UX too so I don’t have any big hopes for this. I like the idea of paying for a search engine, though. I would seriously consider that if DDG offered it.
Brave has a culture of user-hostile UX too so I don’t have any big hopes for this. I like the idea of paying for a search engine, though. I would seriously consider that if DDG offered it.
> Brave has a culture of user-hostile UX
Yep. The missteps that they've made over the past few years do not give me any confidence in the future of the project.
Yep. The missteps that they've made over the past few years do not give me any confidence in the future of the project.
What missteps? The only notable UX issue we've had was years ago, and was a matter of naïve design. When we were made aware of the issue, it was corrected within 48 hours. Hard to portray that as a "culture of hostile UX".
I'd say only allowing BAT withdrawal to a single hosted wallet provider that requires KYC is a pretty significant UX issue.
That’s not hostile, it’s literally a requirement in the US for crypto.
Maybe that's a sign that we should keep our browser and crypto wallets as separate entities, no?
Yea, but I mean who would want to cash out their pennies earned anyways. Only businesses/creators should be cashing out and they would need to KYC for any normal donations. Users should be just donating their pennies to creators and websites, which doesn’t take any KYC.
This was only a year ago and not a great look - https://brave.com/referral-codes-in-suggested-sites/
I haven't noticed any UX issues, great job on the browser, looking forward to the search engine. Thanks.
Maybe you could start by listening instead of accosting every comment that you find. Your incessant reply-bombing is childish and unprofessional, nobody wants to engage with someone who defends a browser like it's their sole lifeline.
Furthermore, you don't get to choose what your "UX issues" are. "UX" quite literally stands for "users experience", which is on the other side of the spectrum from "developer experience". As a dev myself, I know it's difficult not to conflate the two, but acting like issues straight up don't exist is blatantly hostile.
I have no personal qualms against Brave. I'm just another developer who wants a browser, and Brave's naive featureset doesn't appeal to me: that's fine. I'm just helping other, similar users make the right choice.
Furthermore, you don't get to choose what your "UX issues" are. "UX" quite literally stands for "users experience", which is on the other side of the spectrum from "developer experience". As a dev myself, I know it's difficult not to conflate the two, but acting like issues straight up don't exist is blatantly hostile.
I have no personal qualms against Brave. I'm just another developer who wants a browser, and Brave's naive featureset doesn't appeal to me: that's fine. I'm just helping other, similar users make the right choice.
I'm responding to users. You happen to have numerous comments here which aren't entirely accurate or fair, so I have responded to you a few times. Don't take it personal; if you publish something I feel is inaccurate, I'll post a response.
Regarding user experience, I'm not just a developer of Brave, but I'm a user also ;-) Not only that, but I spend a lot of time speaking with users all across the Web, so as to understand how they're using Brave, what works, and what doesn't. I do feel uniquely qualified to talk about matter of UX when it comes to Brave.
Regarding user experience, I'm not just a developer of Brave, but I'm a user also ;-) Not only that, but I spend a lot of time speaking with users all across the Web, so as to understand how they're using Brave, what works, and what doesn't. I do feel uniquely qualified to talk about matter of UX when it comes to Brave.
> I'm responding to users. You happen to have numerous comments here which aren't entirely accurate or fair, so I have responded to you a few times. Don't take it personal; if you publish something I feel is inaccurate, I'll post a response.
I’m not posting this in fight mode, I sincerely hope it will help: this is user hostile.
You’re responding but you’re not listening. You’re certainly not asking. How could you be sure you know what the other people you interact with think if you feel uniquely qualified to talk about users’ experience and just brush by people who don’t feel supported in their own experience?
I’m not posting this in fight mode, I sincerely hope it will help: this is user hostile.
You’re responding but you’re not listening. You’re certainly not asking. How could you be sure you know what the other people you interact with think if you feel uniquely qualified to talk about users’ experience and just brush by people who don’t feel supported in their own experience?
I don’t use Brave but I think these guys are being unfair. Your comments are generally fine because they’ve prompted responses with detail, which I as a third party prefer.
“Brave is full of UX issues” <<< “Brave allows withdrawing BAT to only a single wallet provider”.
Okay, the latter comment is way more useful to me, a lay follower than the former. And it only happens because you pushed.
“Brave is full of UX issues” <<< “Brave allows withdrawing BAT to only a single wallet provider”.
Okay, the latter comment is way more useful to me, a lay follower than the former. And it only happens because you pushed.
> I'm responding to users.
I'm gonna have to agree with GP that you're responding too much. I don't even use Brave nor do I care but I still browse HN. Obviously different people will see things differently, but you seem very defensive and it makes you come across as difficult.
Like I said, I have no skin in this game. You are welcome to ignore what I say if you don't find it helpful.
I'm gonna have to agree with GP that you're responding too much. I don't even use Brave nor do I care but I still browse HN. Obviously different people will see things differently, but you seem very defensive and it makes you come across as difficult.
Like I said, I have no skin in this game. You are welcome to ignore what I say if you don't find it helpful.
slver(1)
Since you seem to know it all I'll just leave you be. My only actionable advice is that you should hire someone nicer to handle public relations, lest you bleed users from your own mouth.
I do believe I've been quite respectful with you. If at any time I was caustic, abrasive, or offensive, I apologize. It is certainly not my intention.
From my read through the thread, you're being very nice, but also very dismissive. That's not actually respectful, even if it's not the harsh things you describe. And it's not kind. If you disagree with someone's experience that you feel passionately about defending, you might have better luck defending it by taking a moment to think about what they experienced differently from your own experience, how much you care about that different experience, and how you might incorporate that into future action. Not everything needs public relations, and it can definitely feel uncaring if it's mostly public explainings.
People are too sensitive nowadays. Everything needs to be wrapped silk and the actual information gets shrouded by fluff.
It’s not clear who you’re saying is being too sensitive, or why you think so.
[deleted]
I see you put the twit in twitter.
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Why not try Neeva? They are going the route of a paid search engine.
Upvoted, but here is the reason why I don't use it, some people haven't yet fully realized that Internet doesn't have borders:
> We will be in touch when we are ready to release Neeva in your country. Thank you for being part of the Neeva team, we are so excited to build the future of search with you.
> We will be in touch when we are ready to release Neeva in your country. Thank you for being part of the Neeva team, we are so excited to build the future of search with you.
I’m using Neeva. I like the team and the idea, but at least for me there is a drastic drop off in search quality from google. It is pretty far from 95% as good.
Can you elaborate on how you feel "Brave has a culture of user-hostile UX"? You're not talking about the first version of the User Tipping feature from 2018 (where Brave gave BAT to its users and asked them to give mark which creator(s) they'd like to support) are you?
Generally the same type of problems as a lot of UX has today, especially on mobile: various messages and modals and controls that seem to be motivated by Brave’s needs, not mine. Sponsored images, trying to get me to set it as standard browser, “Brave rewards” whatever that is being a permanent part of the UI and turning itself on without me asking it to.
These might be small things compared to Google, but I’ve never experienced that DuckDuckGo did anything like it, so my trust in them is higher.
These might be small things compared to Google, but I’ve never experienced that DuckDuckGo did anything like it, so my trust in them is higher.
Let me expand a little on why I think this is so corrosive to my trust in Brave, because this is interesting stuff. When I use the Brave browser, I have to second-guess everything in the UI to consider why a control or message is there, if it’s in my interest or if you’re trying to get me to do something that’s in your interest. My eyes have to scan the UI in much the same way I do with ads in search results or spam in my inbox; having to actively filter out the potential harms from the things that are useful.
It’s like I can feel my eyes getting more tense as I do this.
That means that every single time I use the browser, the impression that Brave should not be trusted is reinforced in a very physical way. It’s not just a “brand impression” but a muscle memory.
It’s like I can feel my eyes getting more tense as I do this.
That means that every single time I use the browser, the impression that Brave should not be trusted is reinforced in a very physical way. It’s not just a “brand impression” but a muscle memory.
Yep, agreed. I ended up switching to Firefox as a result of things like this, which was good in many ways but took a lot more configuration.
After using the duck for a couple of years, I have become better at two things:
- Reading man pages or official documentation sites before opening a search engine
- Thinking of more precise search keywords, as I got used to duck not helping me as much as google
- Reading man pages or official documentation sites before opening a search engine
- Thinking of more precise search keywords, as I got used to duck not helping me as much as google
Along these lines I use ddg’s bangs for the same benefit. So many searches for Python help are filled with very shallow intros on tutorial sites of varying quality with the official docs rarely the first result.
Now I just prefix my query with !py and I’m immediately taken to the docs.
Now I just prefix my query with !py and I’m immediately taken to the docs.
Brave Search supports !bangs ;)
That’s good to know!
For clarity, I wasn’t trying to say DDG is better than Brave, rather agreeing with the parent that there are smarter tools for gathering information rather than relying solely on a search engine.
For clarity, I wasn’t trying to say DDG is better than Brave, rather agreeing with the parent that there are smarter tools for gathering information rather than relying solely on a search engine.
Indeed, including nearly all of DDG's !bangs :) We also add in some others, such as !so for StackOverflow, !gh for GitHub, and !mdn for the Mozilla Developer Network.
Those are also in DDG.
Wouldn't surprise me; DDG has an impressive list of !bangs (more than 13K, IIRC). Thanks for the clarification!
And is there any list of all available bangs + also do we have an ability to add new ones?
Tip it lacks keyboard shortcuts to navigate search results (up/down, enter).
also: considering how far out in the long tail of search terms my query is, before choosing to go with the !g bang out of the gate.
Google I find is still better for topics that are more idiosyncratic. But the bang syntax makes DDG a natural choice as default because many times I'll want to go directly to a specific domain search, e.g. !r or !nyt
Google I find is still better for topics that are more idiosyncratic. But the bang syntax makes DDG a natural choice as default because many times I'll want to go directly to a specific domain search, e.g. !r or !nyt
> Is 95% really not acceptable?
No: When you use web search for professional work, such as searching for error messages or description of bugs of some software, any miss of somebod having encountered and solved them before can cost you days of work.
From my experience, Google is currently still the best at finding those.
No: When you use web search for professional work, such as searching for error messages or description of bugs of some software, any miss of somebod having encountered and solved them before can cost you days of work.
From my experience, Google is currently still the best at finding those.
I think before you spend days of work on something DDG can't find, taking a few seconds to add !g and check Google's results would be sensible. Usually when I try that, though, Google isn't any better.
I use DDG on personal devices and Google at work. I have a work-issued Google account, so privacy isn't really tractable for work stuff anyway
> When I don’t get the results I hoped I just use !g. Easy. But the result are rarely any better
This is exactly my experience. I have a "failed" search probably about a quarter of the time. Changing around the keywords can sometimes fix those failures... maybe about a quarter again are still stuck. So, yeah, ~5% failure rate. I inevitably try !g and am inevitably disappointed with effectively the same results (or lack thereof). Google successfully recovers a failed search maybe 10% of the time.
This is exactly my experience. I have a "failed" search probably about a quarter of the time. Changing around the keywords can sometimes fix those failures... maybe about a quarter again are still stuck. So, yeah, ~5% failure rate. I inevitably try !g and am inevitably disappointed with effectively the same results (or lack thereof). Google successfully recovers a failed search maybe 10% of the time.
> Is 95% really not acceptable?
Moreover, is any search engine really at 95% success rate? I certainly have never gotten that high with Google, even back in the days when Google Search was good. Nowadays it's like 85% or so. About the same as DuckDuckGo for me. No matter which one I made my default, I'd have to check the other occasionally. (Incidentally, the same is true of satellite imagery. Sometimes Bing Maps is just much better for no obvious reason.)
Moreover, is any search engine really at 95% success rate? I certainly have never gotten that high with Google, even back in the days when Google Search was good. Nowadays it's like 85% or so. About the same as DuckDuckGo for me. No matter which one I made my default, I'd have to check the other occasionally. (Incidentally, the same is true of satellite imagery. Sometimes Bing Maps is just much better for no obvious reason.)
It isn't acceptable, no. I tried Duck Search (aka Bing) for a couple weeks and in the beginning I wouldn't know that I wasn't getting the results I was looking for and eventually realized that the results just sucked compared to Google.
I found myself having to second guess the results and then did a Duck / Google hybrid for a while, going to Google when I didn't get what I was looking for and eventually it was too much friction. I equate it with when I used to use two different text editors, one for speed (Sublime) and another (IntelliJ)for step-debugging because Sublime didn't have that part well implemented and it was just maddening to have to switch back and forth all the time and learn/maintain two sets of keyboard shortcuts etc.
I found myself having to second guess the results and then did a Duck / Google hybrid for a while, going to Google when I didn't get what I was looking for and eventually it was too much friction. I equate it with when I used to use two different text editors, one for speed (Sublime) and another (IntelliJ)for step-debugging because Sublime didn't have that part well implemented and it was just maddening to have to switch back and forth all the time and learn/maintain two sets of keyboard shortcuts etc.
> When I don’t get the results I hoped I just use !g
I use !sp instead, same results and no Google tracking
(!sp searches on Startpage which in turn uses results from Google; according to both Privacy Badger and Brave Shields there are no trackers on SP)
I use !sp instead, same results and no Google tracking
(!sp searches on Startpage which in turn uses results from Google; according to both Privacy Badger and Brave Shields there are no trackers on SP)
I sometimes wonder if that 5% is something DDG and others can realistically solve. Perhaps the issue has less to do with engineering and more to do with Google being the dominant player over the previous 20-years (give or take). That's an awfully long time for one company to effectively own a product category and build expectations among users about how it should work.
FWIW I do get good results from DDG (sometimes better than Google) but that does require me to be a bit more thoughtful with my queries.
FWIW I do get good results from DDG (sometimes better than Google) but that does require me to be a bit more thoughtful with my queries.
For me it's random technical dumb stuff, like library version compatibility.
Or a specific syntax I know exist but I can't figure out.
Now when I don't find what I need, I double check with g! ... once every 2 or 3 times, google do find what I'm vaguely remember exist and is out there.
Is never actual content, it's when I look for a specific one liner to copy paste and DDG do not deliver.
I can live with that.
Now when I don't find what I need, I double check with g! ... once every 2 or 3 times, google do find what I'm vaguely remember exist and is out there.
Is never actual content, it's when I look for a specific one liner to copy paste and DDG do not deliver.
I can live with that.
I am on the third or forth trial to change to DDG and this time it is working not because DDG is better but because Google's search is degrading so much.
I tried brave search today and the results were rather good. I have no idea what 95% working means but this is a nice start
In my experience, without use of g! DDG isn't serviceable.
DDG already includes Google (amongst others) in its results. It's not just a front end to Bing, like many assume (though I can't find DDG's article on the subject to directly cite).
The thing with people who switch to DDG is, they do so consciously for privacy reasons but then forget that the reason G's results are so good is because they add little bits of context in through their profiling. But that doesn't mean that DDG's results can't be as good as G's, it just means you need to add that context yourself. Like if you search for a coding problem, add your computer language name to the search query. Or if you're search for a restaurant, add in your home town too.
I've found DDG's results to be comparable to Google's and in fact in the last ~3 years of exclusively using DDG, I can count on one hand the number of times I've tried searching for something in Google after a failed search in DDG.
Image searching is a little more hit and miss though. G's image search is better -- generally speaking. However DDG doesn't include Pinterest spam. So if you're after something specific using image searching, Google is better. But if you're after a general list of usable images, then DDG is better.
The thing with people who switch to DDG is, they do so consciously for privacy reasons but then forget that the reason G's results are so good is because they add little bits of context in through their profiling. But that doesn't mean that DDG's results can't be as good as G's, it just means you need to add that context yourself. Like if you search for a coding problem, add your computer language name to the search query. Or if you're search for a restaurant, add in your home town too.
I've found DDG's results to be comparable to Google's and in fact in the last ~3 years of exclusively using DDG, I can count on one hand the number of times I've tried searching for something in Google after a failed search in DDG.
Image searching is a little more hit and miss though. G's image search is better -- generally speaking. However DDG doesn't include Pinterest spam. So if you're after something specific using image searching, Google is better. But if you're after a general list of usable images, then DDG is better.
> DDG already includes Google (amongst others) in its results. It's not just a front end to Bing, like many assume (though I can't find DDG's article on the subject to directly cite).
Per DDG's own help pages, they use mostly Bing and no Google. (The mixture of over 400 sources that they claim is used to provide the infobox-type results, which they call "Instant Answers", not the regular search results)
> We also of course have more traditional links in the search results, which we also source from multiple partners, though most commonly from Bing (and none from Google).
https://help.duckduckgo.com/results/sources/
Per DDG's own help pages, they use mostly Bing and no Google. (The mixture of over 400 sources that they claim is used to provide the infobox-type results, which they call "Instant Answers", not the regular search results)
> We also of course have more traditional links in the search results, which we also source from multiple partners, though most commonly from Bing (and none from Google).
https://help.duckduckgo.com/results/sources/
> but then forget that the reason G's results are so good is because they add little bits of context in through their profiling
I disagree. I've tried to switch to DDG several times too, and always go back to StartPage, which is a proxy for Google, and the results were always better even without profiling. There is a case to be made for Google having better results globally from aggregate user behaviour though.
I disagree. I've tried to switch to DDG several times too, and always go back to StartPage, which is a proxy for Google, and the results were always better even without profiling. There is a case to be made for Google having better results globally from aggregate user behaviour though.
I think googles crawler excels at crawling forums and social media like stack overflow or Reddit or support forums. The main thing I use google for is when I have a bug whose solution is 9 pages into some thread on some obscure discussion board I’ve never heard of
G's results are terrible for over 5 years and now they are reaching uselessness levels of Altavista.
No G, I didn't want to search for what you suggested, really not.
No G, I didn't want to search for what you suggested, really not.
> "This new-fangled technology is worse than what we had back in my day!"
DDG also makes it very to download images, unlike Google that now makes you go though to whatever site and have to scroll around in the page to find the image
Google was forced to do that because sites where screaming google is stealing their traffic by linking directly to images.
Once DDG is big enough, they will be forced to do the same.
Once DDG is big enough, they will be forced to do the same.
Or as people like to say about Uber, DDG is doing "legal arbitrage" since they're still small and Google can't do that anymore.
The best thing about Google is that if you're on a website - say a travel website looking at hotels in Thailand - and then you Google "USD" it automatically completes "USD to Thai Baht" and then just gives you the answer very user friendly automatically. The same is true if you'd search "Best p" - you get "Best places to visit in Thailand" immediately, with a bunch of cards that are easy to read and use and get to more relevant things you're looking for.
Sure - this invades your privacy. But it leads to good results and a better experience.
You really don't want to give up your privacy in exchange for nothing. But this doesn't feel like the case here.
It's also just as good for location things. If I'm in different neighborhoods - I can type one letter in - and Google will pop up the right restaurant - and then in one or two clicks I can make an order.
This feels like a trade I can live with. I get it that a lot of people can't.
Sure - this invades your privacy. But it leads to good results and a better experience.
You really don't want to give up your privacy in exchange for nothing. But this doesn't feel like the case here.
It's also just as good for location things. If I'm in different neighborhoods - I can type one letter in - and Google will pop up the right restaurant - and then in one or two clicks I can make an order.
This feels like a trade I can live with. I get it that a lot of people can't.
You're happy to give up your privacy just to save typing a few characters?
Considering that I use Google instead of DDG primarily because of how good the contextually aware results are for the things I most commonly search - sure.
> Or if you're search for a restaurant, add in your home town too.
This definitely doesn't help in India. If you live in the US, Brave/DDG can probably serve you better local results. It's abysmal in India. Google local results in India are orders of magnitude better here.
This definitely doesn't help in India. If you live in the US, Brave/DDG can probably serve you better local results. It's abysmal in India. Google local results in India are orders of magnitude better here.
I live in Europe so I'm definitely not talking from a US perspective. But I acknowledge that web services are generally worse in India than most (other) developed countries.
This exhibits the halting problem, no?
I tried to use DDG, but now I don’t because I never knew whether it was just my DDG search that had been unsuccessful or whether there were truly no results.
In fact, I wouldn’t know with any search engine whether there are “truly no results”, so I use G because I prefer to get what’s widely accepted to be the closest results possible.
I tried to use DDG, but now I don’t because I never knew whether it was just my DDG search that had been unsuccessful or whether there were truly no results.
In fact, I wouldn’t know with any search engine whether there are “truly no results”, so I use G because I prefer to get what’s widely accepted to be the closest results possible.
DDG almost fails in the same way as goog.
The only advantage I have seen in results is Google has removed nonsense and conspiracy garbage from their results.
It's the general rush towards infantilism. I want to see the kind of nonsense that has assuaged so many people into effective insanity and apparently Google has decided that I'm not enough of an adult to view it.
It's like their Android dictionary. It lacks lots of words that I have to go and check manually because they've decided that someone using a nuanced word is only done in error
Or with their search where they remove all the important stuff from the query and return the results that I was specifically trying to avoid with those important modifiers "there's not many results with x" - Yes! That's the point.
All over the place they're just on some endless campaign to patronize the userbase. From the address bar that simply just refuses to do http: to a painfully dumb search in Gmail, it's really a company wide systemic problem they need to address.
At least back in the say AOL days, which were renown for this kind of mentality, they kept things at a stable sophistication for the lifetime of the product. It wasn't in some unending rush to become ever more stupid and childish with every subsequent release
The only advantage I have seen in results is Google has removed nonsense and conspiracy garbage from their results.
It's the general rush towards infantilism. I want to see the kind of nonsense that has assuaged so many people into effective insanity and apparently Google has decided that I'm not enough of an adult to view it.
It's like their Android dictionary. It lacks lots of words that I have to go and check manually because they've decided that someone using a nuanced word is only done in error
Or with their search where they remove all the important stuff from the query and return the results that I was specifically trying to avoid with those important modifiers "there's not many results with x" - Yes! That's the point.
All over the place they're just on some endless campaign to patronize the userbase. From the address bar that simply just refuses to do http: to a painfully dumb search in Gmail, it's really a company wide systemic problem they need to address.
At least back in the say AOL days, which were renown for this kind of mentality, they kept things at a stable sophistication for the lifetime of the product. It wasn't in some unending rush to become ever more stupid and childish with every subsequent release
Same excitement here. I'd love to see anyone(Brave or others) chip away at my Google dependencies, even if they charge me for them. I already love Brave as a browser, so here's hoping search pans out.
I don't mind a company profiling me. A lot of Google's cross interacting products work great(Gmail to Calendar and Maps, for example). I just don't want them advertising to me, or selling my data. A guy can dream...
I don't mind a company profiling me. A lot of Google's cross interacting products work great(Gmail to Calendar and Maps, for example). I just don't want them advertising to me, or selling my data. A guy can dream...
> I don't mind a company profiling me
Not everyone has that luxury.
> I just don't want them advertising to me, or selling my data
Then your data is worthless to them. Nobody wants companies to abuse their personal data, that's why it's such a lucrative business. Companies like Apple and Brave get away with it by edging out competition and instating their own standards (see: Brave's Ad "replacement"). It's all so ridiculously asinine that it makes me want to uninstall every piece of software from my computer and use it exclusively as a space heater for the rest of my life.
Not everyone has that luxury.
> I just don't want them advertising to me, or selling my data
Then your data is worthless to them. Nobody wants companies to abuse their personal data, that's why it's such a lucrative business. Companies like Apple and Brave get away with it by edging out competition and instating their own standards (see: Brave's Ad "replacement"). It's all so ridiculously asinine that it makes me want to uninstall every piece of software from my computer and use it exclusively as a space heater for the rest of my life.
> Then your data is worthless to them
This is precisely the point. It should be worse than worthless, it should cost them money. And they should charge that to me, plus some nominal fee. I guess that's what I'm asking for.
This is precisely the point. It should be worse than worthless, it should cost them money. And they should charge that to me, plus some nominal fee. I guess that's what I'm asking for.
The issue is that you're not describing a sustainable business model. Sure, it would be a much better situation than we have now, but you can't cover hosting fees with data bills.
That's a strange argument. "If we pay you for the product you give us, we'll never be able to pay our service providers. Instead, we'll give sell it to someone else."
Uh oh, someone better tell Microsoft that charging businesses for Exchange isn’t a sustainable business model.
If there was a broadly enforced requirement to pay users for their data, businesses would adapt.
How much money does Google make again?
Brave isn't capturing user data, and the "replacement" topic requires more nuanced coverage. Internet users have been installing ad-and-content blockers long before Brave (when Netscape launched the Plugin API back in 1996 or so, ad-blockers began to appear almost immediately).
Brave is rescuing the Web from a block-alone response, which starves content creators of much-needed support. Brave also increases the potential for support by giving users without disposable income (and those with disposable income) the ability to support those who make the Web enjoyable. We do this in a manner which is low-friction, and anonymous too (thanks to the Basic Attention Token).
Brave has introduced a model that understands the security and privacy reasons for blocking third-party ads and trackers. But Brave doesn't stop there (as is the case with popular blockers); it also aims to address the issue of content sustainability online.
Brave is rescuing the Web from a block-alone response, which starves content creators of much-needed support. Brave also increases the potential for support by giving users without disposable income (and those with disposable income) the ability to support those who make the Web enjoyable. We do this in a manner which is low-friction, and anonymous too (thanks to the Basic Attention Token).
Brave has introduced a model that understands the security and privacy reasons for blocking third-party ads and trackers. But Brave doesn't stop there (as is the case with popular blockers); it also aims to address the issue of content sustainability online.
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You should read The Age of Surveillance Capitalism.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=swMo1sK5ntk
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=swMo1sK5ntk
> > I don't mind a company profiling me
> Not everyone has that luxury.
Defend that statement.
> Not everyone has that luxury.
Defend that statement.
> I just don't want them advertising to me, or selling my data.
Google doesn't sell your data.
They sell the opportunity for companies to place their ads based on Google's placement algorithms, which use your data.
There is a big difference, and while I don't expect the general population makes the distinction I think on HN people should understand this.
Google doesn't sell your data.
They sell the opportunity for companies to place their ads based on Google's placement algorithms, which use your data.
There is a big difference, and while I don't expect the general population makes the distinction I think on HN people should understand this.
> I just don't want them advertising to me, or selling my data.
You can get pretty close to that by buying YT Premium [if you watch YouTube] and using an adblocker everywhere else, and this gives Google the non-ad-based monetary incentive to profile your viewing habits to show you more videos it thinks you'll like without optimizing for Ads.
You can get pretty close to that by buying YT Premium [if you watch YouTube] and using an adblocker everywhere else, and this gives Google the non-ad-based monetary incentive to profile your viewing habits to show you more videos it thinks you'll like without optimizing for Ads.
I've stuck with DDG for about the past year and a half and I have to agree. I want it to be good, but when debugging some obscure problem (like trying to learn SwiftUI lately) Google is able to dig up more result. Of course the "there were not results for <your error message> so displaying results for 'computer programming instead'" is frustrating so I preemtively add quotes around every term more frequently.
Lately I've noticed a weird problem with DDG where it will load a blank page of results. The page header with logo and search bar is there, but the white part of the page that has results never loads. Even after refreshing multiple times it's the same, but trying a different query fixes it.
If Brave can manage to produce higher quality results while weeding out SEO spam I will definitely subscribe.
Lately I've noticed a weird problem with DDG where it will load a blank page of results. The page header with logo and search bar is there, but the white part of the page that has results never loads. Even after refreshing multiple times it's the same, but trying a different query fixes it.
If Brave can manage to produce higher quality results while weeding out SEO spam I will definitely subscribe.
> a weird problem with DDG where it will load a blank page of results
I've noticed the same problem too. My guess is that DDG pulls search results from 3rd-party engines such as Bing and for some technical issues it may fail from time to time.
I've noticed the same problem too. My guess is that DDG pulls search results from 3rd-party engines such as Bing and for some technical issues it may fail from time to time.
I wish they would add a feature that would let you add your own tags to counterweight the lack of tracking.
Right now google knows a lot about you and uses it to refine the search results, if you remove tracking - quality drops. But if you at least let the user tell the engine that "I'm a programmer, gamer, geek, whatever" it might just do the trick to counterweight that.
Right now google knows a lot about you and uses it to refine the search results, if you remove tracking - quality drops. But if you at least let the user tell the engine that "I'm a programmer, gamer, geek, whatever" it might just do the trick to counterweight that.
Hey, we are planning on implementing something very similar to what you describe. You can read more about our proposal here: https://brave.com/goggles
In a nutshell, community-curated lists of rules to deeply change the way our core ranking algorithm surface content and influence the results you see for a given query.
In a nutshell, community-curated lists of rules to deeply change the way our core ranking algorithm surface content and influence the results you see for a given query.
DuckDuckGo allows you to do a Google search by prepending "!g" to any query. So usually I do that for the last 5% of queries that DDG fails on.
You can use !g on Brave Search too, or turn on Fallback Mixing in Brave Search Settings, which will anonymously call out to Google and pull in results as needed. This helps to train the nascent engine more rapidly. I hope this helps!
I am not able to locate this setting. I am using Brave Search on Firefox. Is that available only on Brave Search on Brave browser?
Yes, the Fallback Mixing requires the Brave browser, since it pipes the request through the participating user's machine (only if the user has first opted-in to the feature).
Is that legal?
Why wouldn't it be? Google scrapes the web to populate it's results, why wouldn't other search engines scrape the web as well? Google is a website.
It's not scraping static text in order to point you to those sites, it's using the features of the site to perform a service better than you can do yourself. It's completely different.
If I made a site that claimed to help you with your math homework and simply sent the queries to WolframAlpha, that would also not just be "scraping."
If I made a site that claimed to help you with your math homework and simply sent the queries to WolframAlpha, that would also not just be "scraping."
This is basically what Google does to Wikipedia and rebrands as "Knowledge Graph".
Google has donated many millions to the Wikimedia Foundation, basically in payment for this.
(But, again, there's a difference between scraping and echoing a request on another site and waiting for its response. The latter is basically unauthorized use of its API, not scraping.)
(But, again, there's a difference between scraping and echoing a request on another site and waiting for its response. The latter is basically unauthorized use of its API, not scraping.)
It'll be very telling if Google switches to using Wikipedia Enterprise: https://www.wired.com/story/wikipedia-finally-asking-big-tec...
My guess is Google's "donation" is pennies on the dollar from what they benefit from Wikipedia, and more of a token gesture than anything else.
My guess is Google's "donation" is pennies on the dollar from what they benefit from Wikipedia, and more of a token gesture than anything else.
This is naive. Web sites have various terms of service.
Violating a website's ToS is hardly illegal, though.
> Violating a website's ToS is hardly illegal, though.
Can you be more specific as to your claim? Not illegal in what sense(s)? And what is your basis for the claim?
I'm not a lawyer, but saying "violating a website's ToS is hardly illegal" is fraught advice.
While individuals may get some leeway when it comes to ToS violations (see [1] and [2]), I would expect companies scraping and/or extracting content would be treated differently.
[1]: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/07/court-violating-terms-...
[2]: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/03/court-violating-...
[3]: https://www.octoparse.com/blog/10-myths-about-web-scraping
[4]: https://www.law.com/newyorklawjournal/almID/1202610687621/?s...
Can you be more specific as to your claim? Not illegal in what sense(s)? And what is your basis for the claim?
I'm not a lawyer, but saying "violating a website's ToS is hardly illegal" is fraught advice.
While individuals may get some leeway when it comes to ToS violations (see [1] and [2]), I would expect companies scraping and/or extracting content would be treated differently.
[1]: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/07/court-violating-terms-...
[2]: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/03/court-violating-...
[3]: https://www.octoparse.com/blog/10-myths-about-web-scraping
[4]: https://www.law.com/newyorklawjournal/almID/1202610687621/?s...
The only way for it to be illegal is if they're breaking a law, but then it would be illegal regardless of what the ToS says.
Because Google's robots.txt disallows it, and those websites allow it.
robots.txt is not a legal contract. It's just a convention to express the wishes of the site author, but there's no legal obligation to follow these wishes.
It does indicate that those other sites want Google to scrape them, while Google does not want others to scrape their results, which is an important distinction ocdtrekkie ignored for whether the scrapee will want to take legal action.
You may wish to review https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/09/victory-ruling-hiq-v-l...
Google Search results are definitely "public data" so long as Google provides them to anyone who asks.
Google Search results are definitely "public data" so long as Google provides them to anyone who asks.
Then why does Startpage pay Google and DDG pay Microsoft?
While scraping search results isn't illegal, by any means, it's also not illegal for Google or Microsoft to block requests they believe are from competing search engines. Presumably the cost of paying them is less than the cost of hiring engineers to constantly try to find new ways to outwit Google and Microsoft engineers.
Again, if scraping data from websites without permission, Google simply wouldn't exist. Bear in mind, robots.txt is a feature that Google and Microsoft choose to respect, but the default assumption search engines have made from the beginning, is that they are free to grab whatever they want from the web, unless you ask them otherwise to please not.
Again, if scraping data from websites without permission, Google simply wouldn't exist. Bear in mind, robots.txt is a feature that Google and Microsoft choose to respect, but the default assumption search engines have made from the beginning, is that they are free to grab whatever they want from the web, unless you ask them otherwise to please not.
> the default assumption search engines have made from the beginning, is that they are free to grab whatever they want from the web, unless you ask them otherwise to please not.
Which Google's robots.txt does.
> scraping search results isn't illegal, by any means
While scraping the results for yourself to look at might be OK, scraping results to display verbatim in another search engine without permission stretches fair use.
Which Google's robots.txt does.
> scraping search results isn't illegal, by any means
While scraping the results for yourself to look at might be OK, scraping results to display verbatim in another search engine without permission stretches fair use.
It's just a redirect to Google.
There seem to be two different features:
1. Redirection to Google.
2. Piping Google's results back to Brave Search's UI: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27594754
The original commenter was asking about the latter.
1. Redirection to Google.
2. Piping Google's results back to Brave Search's UI: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27594754
The original commenter was asking about the latter.
Ah, I see, Thanks for the heads up.
Is scraping Google for your own commercial search engine legal?
The frustration I am talking about is:
Check query result -> realize the result is bad -> scroll back to the search bar -> place cursor at the beginning of the query -> enter "!g" -> redirect to Google.com
It is not too bad on desktop, but doing it once on a smartphone is more than enough to push me to switch back to Google.
Check query result -> realize the result is bad -> scroll back to the search bar -> place cursor at the beginning of the query -> enter "!g" -> redirect to Google.com
It is not too bad on desktop, but doing it once on a smartphone is more than enough to push me to switch back to Google.
The !g can be almost anywhere in the query, it just can't be followed by non-whitespace or prefixed by special signs.
This is what I wanted to say. It's a life saver on mobile especially. Just append !g to the query (or !gi for google images, !gm for maps, etc)
Personally I find it pretty predictable which queries duck duck go will fail on. Basically very niche ones.
So I just prepend based on what I'm searching for to begin with instead of after a failure. But I've also been using duckduckgo as my default for over a decade so I've gotten used to it.
So I just prepend based on what I'm searching for to begin with instead of after a failure. But I've also been using duckduckgo as my default for over a decade so I've gotten used to it.
I'm amazed that DDG/Brave don't understand that typing something immediately after a "!" on a smartphone is annoying and difficult. DDG only supports "!" after the character for a small subset of bangs. Thankfully "g!" is one of them, but it's immensely easier to type on smartphone.
most browsers support <c-l> to hop the cursor to the url bar for searches or url entries
/ <c-e> !g <enter>Or you could just use https://startpage.com/ and get Google quality results 100% of the time.
that's also 100% reliant on google though. what would happen if that became a lot more popular than it is now? would google try to sabotage it in any way?
i would rather support and spread the word about search engines that don't rely solely on google
i would rather support and spread the word about search engines that don't rely solely on google
>
that's also 100% reliant on google though. what would happen if that became a lot more popular than it is now? would google try to sabotage it in any way?
Yes, same applies to DDG/Bing though.
Yes, same applies to DDG/Bing though.
It redirects to Google. So the effect (including tracking) is identical to just doing a Google search.
This is incorrect. Fallback-Mixing, if you have enabled it (which requires Brave), issues an anonymous query to Google, lacking any cookies or other persistent state for that domain. These results are then presented along with Brave Search's own results. There's no tracking involved. If you perform a direct Google search, you're passing along your cookies as well.
The user was replying to using DDG with !g
In an indirect way, it’s possible by doing !sp on DDG, which redirects the search to startpage, which shows untracked google results.
In an indirect way, it’s possible by doing !sp on DDG, which redirects the search to startpage, which shows untracked google results.
Ah, my apologies for any confusion. For what it's worth, the !sp bang is supported on Brave Search as well :)
As I said in my other comment[1], you might be interested in using !sp which gives you the same results without Google tracking
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27598042
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27598042
Startpage is owned by an adtech company now.
that doesn't change the fact that there are no trackers and the fact that it uses Google results
No, but it does mean that you are likely to use it without knowing when they do start tracking you. Because of course an adtech company will (and of course they will deny until the day they change it).
> Because of course an adtech company will
then it seems they're being quite slow, since the acquisition happened almost 2 years ago.
then it seems they're being quite slow, since the acquisition happened almost 2 years ago.
This is silly. 95% of what one can track on the front end can be done on the back end. If you hit Google's servers, you're being tracked. Period.
They will definitely implement ads. They're an advertising company.
"options for ad-free paid search and ad-supported search"
https://brave.com/brave-search-beta/
https://brave.com/brave-search-beta/
Nice, I would pay for it. Would make it a lot easier if the backend was #opensource though. Not saying I won't but it would make it a no-brainer.
Future post: "We have listened to our users, and we are removing ad-free paid search due to a lack of demand and [some excuses about how it's technically difficult to maintain it]."
We'll see which comes first. That post, or "Our Great Journey."
We'll see which comes first. That post, or "Our Great Journey."
Just curious, why are you opposed to search ads? They are already targeted by your search query, so don't fundamentally rely on tracking data.
Since they're nearly indistinguishable from real organic search results, people click on them assuming the search engine found them the best result. This leads to two major problems:
1. Search ads are the primary source of malware and fraud on the Internet today. (Phishing emails are second.) Sites pretend to be other sites all the time, and to allow tracking and landing page behaviors, every major search ad provider allows ads to "lie" about the destination domain. So you may see an Amazon ad, it says it goes to Amazon.com, but actually directs through to realamazonlinkipromise.biz instead. Fraud's really profitable, so fraudsters win ad slots easily, and are adtech companies' best customers, so there's really little incentive to crack down on this.
2. Search ads use this placement as a form of extortion. If you run, say, Best Buy, you shouldn't have to buy search ads for "best buy", because obviously you're the best result. However, they have to, because if they don't, the search engine will sell ads to their competitors using their keyword, so people searching "best buy" get "Circuit City" as the top result instead. (Yes, I chose that reference in part because I don't want to shame any real current companies in this example for sleezy practices.) And since users click the top result (the ad), not the first organic result, Best Buy ends up paying for every click for every user who goes through Google/Bing/etc. to get to Best Buy.
The second reason is why browsers are so obsessed with combining the search and address bars: They want you to search "best buy" or "bestbuy" or etc. because that's ad revenue, whereas actually typing bestbuy.com nets Google nothing.
1. Search ads are the primary source of malware and fraud on the Internet today. (Phishing emails are second.) Sites pretend to be other sites all the time, and to allow tracking and landing page behaviors, every major search ad provider allows ads to "lie" about the destination domain. So you may see an Amazon ad, it says it goes to Amazon.com, but actually directs through to realamazonlinkipromise.biz instead. Fraud's really profitable, so fraudsters win ad slots easily, and are adtech companies' best customers, so there's really little incentive to crack down on this.
2. Search ads use this placement as a form of extortion. If you run, say, Best Buy, you shouldn't have to buy search ads for "best buy", because obviously you're the best result. However, they have to, because if they don't, the search engine will sell ads to their competitors using their keyword, so people searching "best buy" get "Circuit City" as the top result instead. (Yes, I chose that reference in part because I don't want to shame any real current companies in this example for sleezy practices.) And since users click the top result (the ad), not the first organic result, Best Buy ends up paying for every click for every user who goes through Google/Bing/etc. to get to Best Buy.
The second reason is why browsers are so obsessed with combining the search and address bars: They want you to search "best buy" or "bestbuy" or etc. because that's ad revenue, whereas actually typing bestbuy.com nets Google nothing.
> 2. Search ads use this placement as a form of extortion. If you run, say, Best Buy, you shouldn't have to buy search ads for "best buy", because obviously you're the best result. However, they have to, because if they don't, the search engine will sell ads to their competitors using their keyword, so people searching "best buy" get "Circuit City" as the top result instead. (Yes, I chose that reference in part because I don't want to shame any real current companies in this example for sleezy practices.) And since users click the top result (the ad), not the first organic result, Best Buy ends up paying for every click for every user who goes through Google/Bing/etc. to get to Best Buy.
One thing to note is that the cost of the ad is based on the landing page relevance (and even more so for branded terms), and so in your example Best Buy would be able to buy the ad for the "Best Buy" keyword for pennies (a rounding error on their SEM campaign, I'm sure), while Circuit City would have to pay a whole bunch for the "Best Buy" keyword.
Given that, I don't mind it so much. It's a good way for a competitor to get their name out there, but it's not really a sustainable practice long term for them. There's built-in pressure favoring the incumbent on their own terms.
One thing to note is that the cost of the ad is based on the landing page relevance (and even more so for branded terms), and so in your example Best Buy would be able to buy the ad for the "Best Buy" keyword for pennies (a rounding error on their SEM campaign, I'm sure), while Circuit City would have to pay a whole bunch for the "Best Buy" keyword.
Given that, I don't mind it so much. It's a good way for a competitor to get their name out there, but it's not really a sustainable practice long term for them. There's built-in pressure favoring the incumbent on their own terms.
Bear in mind, Best Buy should pay zero pennies for each of the millions of people trying to reach their website. It's absolutely inexcusable for a search company, which also owns an ad company, and also happens to run the web browser everyone's using, to create a system that basically taxes all attempts to visit a business's website specifically.
Honestly, what Google and Microsoft and such are doing in this case is trademark theft. They are selling the search result for a trademarked name they don't own, and when the actual trademark owner wants to be found by their own name... they have to pay for it.
I don't know who is going to file the case, but sooner or later, someone should, because it's a slam dunk.
Honestly, what Google and Microsoft and such are doing in this case is trademark theft. They are selling the search result for a trademarked name they don't own, and when the actual trademark owner wants to be found by their own name... they have to pay for it.
I don't know who is going to file the case, but sooner or later, someone should, because it's a slam dunk.
> every major search ad provider allows ads to "lie" about the destination domain.
This seems like the real problem, not search ads as a concept
> So you may see an Amazon ad, it says it goes to Amazon.com, but actually directs through to realamazonlinkipromise.biz
Just disallow that? Problem solved.
If you want yet another filter, only allow public companies or companies that have raised >10M on Crunchbase to advertise, and have them verify that they are really who they are by asking them to put some string of your choosing in their DNS records.
This seems like the real problem, not search ads as a concept
> So you may see an Amazon ad, it says it goes to Amazon.com, but actually directs through to realamazonlinkipromise.biz
Just disallow that? Problem solved.
If you want yet another filter, only allow public companies or companies that have raised >10M on Crunchbase to advertise, and have them verify that they are really who they are by asking them to put some string of your choosing in their DNS records.
> Just disallow that?
Sure, Google could disclose real advertisement destination URLs tomorrow if they wanted. But the marketers are their customers, and that would upset their customers quite a bit. Especially since a lot of their customers' entire purpose in paying for Google Ads is to exploit that particular feature.
Sure, Google could disclose real advertisement destination URLs tomorrow if they wanted. But the marketers are their customers, and that would upset their customers quite a bit. Especially since a lot of their customers' entire purpose in paying for Google Ads is to exploit that particular feature.
Google only charges users once per user per click.
Honestly, ads clearly marked as ads and contained just to the results page would be fine.
But in the race for better ad performance, they introduced tracking & retargeting & profile building while at the same time both minimizing the visual difference between ads & organic as well as nearly pushing organic of the first page.
But in the race for better ad performance, they introduced tracking & retargeting & profile building while at the same time both minimizing the visual difference between ads & organic as well as nearly pushing organic of the first page.
IMHO search ads are bad search results, and in 99% of time they are not something I would want to click. So they are doing nothing useful but only adding friction to my search experience. I am not against privacy friendly ads in free services, but if there's an option to pay to get rid of ads, I will pay.
I'm in eCommerce, run ads (on eBay, not Google) and would have to agree 100%.
The only products we put paid promotion on are common and overpriced, and the demographic of the customers is very different to what we'd find through our products sold through organic search.
Based solely on anecdata through the messages we receive and the addresses we ship to, the people who click on ads are somewhat more likely to be lower-socio, much more likely to have low literacy skills, and a couple of orders of magnitude more likely (not an exaggeration) to live in a remote Aboriginal community.
It feels somewhat dirty/exploitative, but it's what the customer wants. They have the choice of saving $50+ by scrolling past the first 3-4 results, but they choose not to. I just don't understand.
The only products we put paid promotion on are common and overpriced, and the demographic of the customers is very different to what we'd find through our products sold through organic search.
Based solely on anecdata through the messages we receive and the addresses we ship to, the people who click on ads are somewhat more likely to be lower-socio, much more likely to have low literacy skills, and a couple of orders of magnitude more likely (not an exaggeration) to live in a remote Aboriginal community.
It feels somewhat dirty/exploitative, but it's what the customer wants. They have the choice of saving $50+ by scrolling past the first 3-4 results, but they choose not to. I just don't understand.
I can't answer him, but there is a peace of mind not having ads talk (is not the right word) to you, even absent everything else. As in I can actually set my attention to something and finish a coherent whole without having to give any attention to ads.
I didn't realize this until I installed Sponsorblock which got rid of the last ads I was seeing there. Suddenly I could focus on whatever they were creating and the video was talking about without having my attention diverted to something else.
Maybe that is just me, but that is why I now mind ads.
I didn't realize this until I installed Sponsorblock which got rid of the last ads I was seeing there. Suddenly I could focus on whatever they were creating and the video was talking about without having my attention diverted to something else.
Maybe that is just me, but that is why I now mind ads.
Since the brave search results are so thin, maybe put them on the right to be less confusing.
Search ads have become visually almost indistinguishable from legitimate search results on most search engines, including DuckDuckGo. That's why I try to avoid them whenever possible. DuckDuckGo allows you to turn them off completely.
> Brave Search beta is based on an independent index, the first of its kind.
That's... an interesting way to put it. I can't really twist and turn it into the truth though. Smells like it was put through a lot of PR.
>However, for some queries, Brave can anonymously check our search results against third-party results, and mix them on the results page.
This is something almost all of the search engines outside Google and Bing does. DDG does this with Bing for example.
As far as I can tell the only "new" in this will be that the same thing is done again by another company.
That's... an interesting way to put it. I can't really twist and turn it into the truth though. Smells like it was put through a lot of PR.
>However, for some queries, Brave can anonymously check our search results against third-party results, and mix them on the results page.
This is something almost all of the search engines outside Google and Bing does. DDG does this with Bing for example.
As far as I can tell the only "new" in this will be that the same thing is done again by another company.
"If things go as planned, this may become a paid, ad-free, zero-tracking search engine."
In 1998 when Google's founders announced their search engine they claimed it would be less commercial, more academic, more transparent and they would avoid the influence of advertising. Did things "go as planned." Not even close. What is the lesson here.
Meanwhile, every search submitted during the "beta" period is subject to none of those limitations.
"So, if I am not satisfied with Brave's result, Google's result is on the same page, or just one click away."
Brave is not the first to do that. Check out Gigablast, for example. If I am not mistaken, they also claim to use an "independent index". At least, they provide the source to a crawler and server.^1 That is what people should be excited about. Not Gigablast per se but the idea of an open source search engine that anyone can run. searx is another project worth looking at.^2
How many ways are results promoted and demoted; what are the factors used. Are these search engines that comenters are recommending in this thread transparent. (Making promises on a blog is not "transparency" IMO.) Where is the source code. What are the various server settings that alternatives like Google, DDG, Brave, Startpage, etc. never provide to users. This stuff should matter, yet the discussion of search engines always seems to devolve into personal usage anecdotes and "search shortcuts". Every user has different needs and preferences.
There are many knobs in web search that advertising-supporting tech companies providing "search engine" websites will never let users twiddle. The source code for those servers is not public.
1. To get an idea of type of settings users of popular search engines are not being allowed to control:
(Scroll down to "SEARCH CONTROLS") https://raw.githubusercontent.com/gigablast/open-source-sear...
2. https://github.com/searx/searx
For a current list of searx public instances
In 1998 when Google's founders announced their search engine they claimed it would be less commercial, more academic, more transparent and they would avoid the influence of advertising. Did things "go as planned." Not even close. What is the lesson here.
Meanwhile, every search submitted during the "beta" period is subject to none of those limitations.
"So, if I am not satisfied with Brave's result, Google's result is on the same page, or just one click away."
Brave is not the first to do that. Check out Gigablast, for example. If I am not mistaken, they also claim to use an "independent index". At least, they provide the source to a crawler and server.^1 That is what people should be excited about. Not Gigablast per se but the idea of an open source search engine that anyone can run. searx is another project worth looking at.^2
How many ways are results promoted and demoted; what are the factors used. Are these search engines that comenters are recommending in this thread transparent. (Making promises on a blog is not "transparency" IMO.) Where is the source code. What are the various server settings that alternatives like Google, DDG, Brave, Startpage, etc. never provide to users. This stuff should matter, yet the discussion of search engines always seems to devolve into personal usage anecdotes and "search shortcuts". Every user has different needs and preferences.
There are many knobs in web search that advertising-supporting tech companies providing "search engine" websites will never let users twiddle. The source code for those servers is not public.
1. To get an idea of type of settings users of popular search engines are not being allowed to control:
(Scroll down to "SEARCH CONTROLS") https://raw.githubusercontent.com/gigablast/open-source-sear...
2. https://github.com/searx/searx
For a current list of searx public instances
curl https://searx.space/data/instances.json|grep -Eo '(A\+", .[^"]*.{4}[^"]*)'|cut -d/ -f5|uniq|sed 's>.*>https://&>'hi, gigablast creator, matt, here. thanks for mentioning gigablast. i've been coding web search engines for almost 25 years so it's always nice to see ppl recognize. i wish more ppl would care about these things. with enough people caring i think i (or we) could make gigablast into a super transparent, private search engine that doesn't rely on big tech like the other guys. really i just need more hardware at this point as that is the main technical hurdle for improving results quality and performance. if somebody would give me like $1M in amd-based minicomputers (i like minicomputers better than big servers - preferably asus) i think we could have something much better and faster, although what is there is pretty good -- this might be enough to really get things going.
in the distribution available on github.com, included are some static binaries for various open source programs. any reason that a static gb binary could not be distributed as well. with linux, i use musl so prefer static to ones linked against gblic.
anyway, thx for sharing some of your work. very much appreciated.
> searx
I just gave the docker image a try. It works out of the box but the search time feels slightly more than that of Google - which is one of the reasons I gave up on DDG.
Also, I am curious - if I am hosting it on my own server and using Google as one of the engines - does that not mean my search ultimately goes to Google and they can still profile me?
I just gave the docker image a try. It works out of the box but the search time feels slightly more than that of Google - which is one of the reasons I gave up on DDG.
Also, I am curious - if I am hosting it on my own server and using Google as one of the engines - does that not mean my search ultimately goes to Google and they can still profile me?
I just tested the 47 servers listed in https://searx.space/data/instances.json. I did not use a browser. No Javascript, cookies, etc.. A good number of them worked fine.
Who knows what the people running those instances do with the search data they acquire.
What I like about searx though is the list of search engines it potentially targets. Comprehensive lists of search engines on the internet are always valuable. I see searx as a supply of "parts" with which one can make something of their own. I have made a metasearch utility for myself.
Who knows what the people running those instances do with the search data they acquire.
What I like about searx though is the list of search engines it potentially targets. Comprehensive lists of search engines on the internet are always valuable. I see searx as a supply of "parts" with which one can make something of their own. I have made a metasearch utility for myself.
What does your metasearch approach look like?
A. Text-only
B. Search from command line
C. Can open an index.html of saved search results in any browser; each query gets its own SERP; search results are saved in a directory that can be tarballed and compressed allowing simple transfer to any computer with a UNIX userland
D. Easy to add new sites; follows a failry standard template; currently at only eight sites, but adding more (like the ones in searx)
E. Requires only standard UNIX utilities; consists of small shell scripts of less than 2000 chars
F. Fast; no cruft
Unique features:
1. Streamlined SERP; URLs only, minimal HTML, i.e., <a>, <pre>, <ol>, <li>, <!-- -->; no images, Javascript or CSS; SERP contains timestamps in HTML comments to indicate when each query was submitted
2. Each SERP contains deduped batches of results from different search engines; source search engine indicated by short prefix; if desired, can resort to intersperse results from different sources, e.g., sort by URL
3. Continuation of search; allows retrieval 100s of results by spreading searches across periods of time too long for websites to track, thus allowing retrieval of large numbers of search results while avoiding ridiculously small result limits or temporary bans for "searching too fast" <--- I could not find anyone else using this approach
4. By default only minimum headers sent; custom headers can be sent when appropriate for particular site, e.g., DNT to findx.com; allows for complete customisation of presence/absence/content/order/case of HTTP headers, thus can potentially emulate any browser or other HTTP client (also supports HTTP/1.1 pipelining which curl cannot do)
5. Can be used with any TCP client; not limited to one library, e.g., libcurl; works great with proxies like stunnel and haproxy
6. URL params or hidden form fields that can potentially be used to link one SERP with another SERP are removed or rendered ineffective
B. Search from command line
C. Can open an index.html of saved search results in any browser; each query gets its own SERP; search results are saved in a directory that can be tarballed and compressed allowing simple transfer to any computer with a UNIX userland
D. Easy to add new sites; follows a failry standard template; currently at only eight sites, but adding more (like the ones in searx)
E. Requires only standard UNIX utilities; consists of small shell scripts of less than 2000 chars
F. Fast; no cruft
Unique features:
1. Streamlined SERP; URLs only, minimal HTML, i.e., <a>, <pre>, <ol>, <li>, <!-- -->; no images, Javascript or CSS; SERP contains timestamps in HTML comments to indicate when each query was submitted
2. Each SERP contains deduped batches of results from different search engines; source search engine indicated by short prefix; if desired, can resort to intersperse results from different sources, e.g., sort by URL
3. Continuation of search; allows retrieval 100s of results by spreading searches across periods of time too long for websites to track, thus allowing retrieval of large numbers of search results while avoiding ridiculously small result limits or temporary bans for "searching too fast" <--- I could not find anyone else using this approach
4. By default only minimum headers sent; custom headers can be sent when appropriate for particular site, e.g., DNT to findx.com; allows for complete customisation of presence/absence/content/order/case of HTTP headers, thus can potentially emulate any browser or other HTTP client (also supports HTTP/1.1 pipelining which curl cannot do)
5. Can be used with any TCP client; not limited to one library, e.g., libcurl; works great with proxies like stunnel and haproxy
6. URL params or hidden form fields that can potentially be used to link one SERP with another SERP are removed or rendered ineffective
This Brave search beta is quite slow and there is no way to access "page 2". One page of results. Hard to believe this is "good enough" in 2021.
Hey, Brave Search is currently hosted in the US (I am assuming you are on another country) and latencies will be bigger in other places. We will scale in the future, which should improve speed.
Regarding number of pages of results, please see my answer on another thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27597911
TL;DR: we currently show the equivalent of 2 pages of results and will consider more in the future.
Regarding number of pages of results, please see my answer on another thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27597911
TL;DR: we currently show the equivalent of 2 pages of results and will consider more in the future.
> I mean, DDG worked fine for 95% of time, but the remaining 5% failure often led to some extreme frustration that I just couldn't stand.
So, just use https://startpage.com/ and get proxied Google results. Searx is another alternative.
So, just use https://startpage.com/ and get proxied Google results. Searx is another alternative.
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You can't have something be zero tracking and paid since they need to know if you have paid and so need to be able to track you.
I use DDG for my main search, but there is the !g (i think) that you can prefix a search with to get it sent to google through DDG.
I use DDG for my main search, but there is the !g (i think) that you can prefix a search with to get it sent to google through DDG.
Tracking isn't a necessary component of a subscription service. You can have a model with premium features and/or offerings which doesn't harvest user data, such as searches and more.
I guess you could, but then I would have to depend on the service to hold up their promise not to track me. I don't want that.
> I have made several attempts to replace Google Search with DuckDuckGo. But they have all failed and I always ended up changing the default search engine back to Google.
Hmm...
> Brave Search beta is based on an independent index, the first of its kind. However, for some queries, Brave can anonymously check our search results against third-party results, and mix them on the results page.
That's also what DDG does. If you don't like DDG, odds you'll like some even smaller effort are quite to zero.
Hmm...
> Brave Search beta is based on an independent index, the first of its kind. However, for some queries, Brave can anonymously check our search results against third-party results, and mix them on the results page.
That's also what DDG does. If you don't like DDG, odds you'll like some even smaller effort are quite to zero.
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Do they anonymously check Google though? Maybe they'll just use bing like all the others
I switched to using StartPage after DDG failed me. I ended up adding !g to almost all of the searches.
StartPage shows Google results through a proxy for improved privacy. I am quite happy with it.
StartPage shows Google results through a proxy for improved privacy. I am quite happy with it.
Just a note that StartPage was bought by a not-too-privacy friendly company.
Startpage person here. In 2019, Startpage announced an investment by System1 through Privacy One Group, a wholly-owned subsidiary of System1. It's 2021 and our privacy policy hasn't changed.
What has happened with this investment, we've hired additional engineers and added new features.
And, System1 doesn't receive any user personal data because we don't collect it and never will. Why did System1 invest? "System1 is interested in Startpage's ad revenue, not its data" Source: https://www.computing.co.uk/news/4017337/privacy-focused-sea...
What has happened with this investment, we've hired additional engineers and added new features.
And, System1 doesn't receive any user personal data because we don't collect it and never will. Why did System1 invest? "System1 is interested in Startpage's ad revenue, not its data" Source: https://www.computing.co.uk/news/4017337/privacy-focused-sea...
Startpage was turned into shit over the last few months. Requiring JS for search and absolutely freakish amount of ads dominating the first scroll of results.
Been with them for about a decade but this is too much
Been with them for about a decade but this is too much
Hi - I'm a person from Startpage. I'll share your feedback with the team, but here I can respond to some of these things.
JS: Startpage does use Javascript, but only to enhance user interaction with our site and improve the search results we provide.
ADs: Startpage displays at most 3 ads. Like other private search engines, Startpage's revenue model is based on contextual ads.
Let me know if you have questions or suggestions.
JS: Startpage does use Javascript, but only to enhance user interaction with our site and improve the search results we provide.
ADs: Startpage displays at most 3 ads. Like other private search engines, Startpage's revenue model is based on contextual ads.
Let me know if you have questions or suggestions.
For the other 5% of the time, use the !s bang for Startpage. Anonymized Google search results, with an option to visit the websites on the results page anonymously.
If DDG works in 95% cases, just use it and use !google command on it when it misses the mark.
or even better you can use !sp
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27598042
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27598042
Startpage got sold
I'm aware, that was almost 2 years ago and startpage still has no trackers (as of today, according to EFF Privacy Badger), so I consider it safe.
Fyi. In Firefox you prefix your search with the engine you want to use. That is, DDG can be your start and you can conveniently use Google as needed.
so you're saying it would be better then DDG just because u r paying money for it?
> Over the past few years, I have made several attempts to replace Google Search with DuckDuckGo
I have been using Startpage for a while. It's results are same as Google, but with zero tracking. But it puts (non-personalized) ads in results.
I have been using Startpage for a while. It's results are same as Google, but with zero tracking. But it puts (non-personalized) ads in results.
DuckDuckGo does the exact same thing with shebangs. Brave's implementation is just less granular.
Brave Search supports the Fallback Mixing option, as well as shebangs (e.g. !g, !a, !b, !d, !e, !yt).
They are called bangs, not shebangs. A shebang is #!
> In computing, a shebang is the character sequence consisting of the characters number sign and exclamation mark (#!) at the beginning of a script. It is also called sha-bang,[1][2] hashbang,[3][4] pound-bang,[5][6] or hash-pling.[7] - Wikipedia
> Bangs are shortcuts that quickly take you to search results on other sites. For example, when you know you want to search on another site like Wikipedia or Amazon, our bangs get you there fastest. A search for !w filter bubble will take you directly to Wikipedia. -DDG
> In computing, a shebang is the character sequence consisting of the characters number sign and exclamation mark (#!) at the beginning of a script. It is also called sha-bang,[1][2] hashbang,[3][4] pound-bang,[5][6] or hash-pling.[7] - Wikipedia
> Bangs are shortcuts that quickly take you to search results on other sites. For example, when you know you want to search on another site like Wikipedia or Amazon, our bangs get you there fastest. A search for !w filter bubble will take you directly to Wikipedia. -DDG
Thank you for the correction. I used to call them hash-bangs (not sure where I picked up that habit in my ~25 years of industry experience), until I started seeing more people refer to them as shebangs. Oddly enough, while reading them out I would always say "bang, <identifier>". I'll try to refer to them simply as bangs (or perhaps something like search/filter bangs) from now on
Because '#!' is a hash followed by a bang.
Quite obvious, but naming things is funny in the web-development world. We still call any asynchronous retrieval of data "AJAX," even though it rarely, if ever, involves XML :-)
> Brave can anonymously check our search results against third-party results
Why are we OK with these free services literally stealing Google results? Could you imagine the backlash if it was discovered that Google was doing the same for its results by stealing from DDG or another, smaller player?
Why are we OK with these free services literally stealing Google results? Could you imagine the backlash if it was discovered that Google was doing the same for its results by stealing from DDG or another, smaller player?
Google is a Search Engine. Further, it displays content from sites directly in its results. This includes recipes, show times, sporting event details, and more. It has been argued that Google is stealing this data from smaller sites. Brave is (optionally, if you enable the feature) merely using Google (a more mature apparatus) as a means of learning to deliver better results to the user. The only way somebody is going to "build a better Google" is by training their data on what makes Google so popular to begin with. Brave is able to do this is a secure and private manner.
So Google taking data from sites and putting it on theirs is "stealing" but Brave doing that is different and Brave taking results from Google is considered "learning" or "training"? Hmm... I'm beginning to think people just hate Google because it's "cool" to have a negative opinion about it here.
There is a difference:
Google is taking page content from sites and putting it on their own search result page; Brave is taking search-result links from Google and putting them on their own search result page.
Google is taking page content from sites and putting it on their own search result page; Brave is taking search-result links from Google and putting them on their own search result page.
> On 6 June 2020, a Twitter user pointed out that Brave inserts affiliate referral codes when users type a URL of Binance into the address bar, which earns Brave money. Further research revealed that Brave redirects the URLs of other cryptocurrency exchange websites, too. In response to the backlash from the users, Brave's CEO apologized and called it a "mistake" and said "we're correcting".
Brave is just a "pop-privacy" company. I will skip this one...
Brave is just a "pop-privacy" company. I will skip this one...
That's not accurate. Brave offered affiliate link options to users who were searching for particular terms (screenshot: https://brave.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/image3.png). These were presented to users as a way of optionally supporting Brave development. Our mistake was matching fully-qualified URLs too (screenshot: https://brave.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/image2-1.png). When we were made aware of this, we corrected the issue promptly. No revenue was made from this feature either. No user data was involved. No privacy or security was compromised. This was nothing more than traffic attribution as a means of optionally supporting an open-source, free-to-use browser. Read more about this feature at https://brave.com/referral-codes-in-suggested-sites/.
Compare this with traffic attribution in other browsers: open Firefox and begin typing a search query. If you monitor your network activity, you'll find that your keystrokes are not only sent to Google behind the scenes, but those requests also contain an identifier so that Firefox gets paid for sending you and your queries to Google. Brave users were shown the affiliate options before any network activity. Read more at https://brave.com/popular-browsers-first-run/.
As for the question of privacy, Brave was compared to Chrome, Firefox, and more in a review by Trinity College in Dublin, and they found that Brave exists uniquely in its own category as the "most private" browser tested. Read their technical paper here: https://www.scss.tcd.ie/Doug.Leith/pubs/browser_privacy.pdf.
Compare this with traffic attribution in other browsers: open Firefox and begin typing a search query. If you monitor your network activity, you'll find that your keystrokes are not only sent to Google behind the scenes, but those requests also contain an identifier so that Firefox gets paid for sending you and your queries to Google. Brave users were shown the affiliate options before any network activity. Read more at https://brave.com/popular-browsers-first-run/.
As for the question of privacy, Brave was compared to Chrome, Firefox, and more in a review by Trinity College in Dublin, and they found that Brave exists uniquely in its own category as the "most private" browser tested. Read their technical paper here: https://www.scss.tcd.ie/Doug.Leith/pubs/browser_privacy.pdf.
Disclosure: the author of this comment appears to be a Senior Developer Relations Specialist at Brave.
Correct. Note the use of "we" in my comments, pointing out that I am part of the Brave team. Thank you for stating it more explicitly.
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"No revenue was made from this feature either." Isn't that just stating that you were caught before you had the chance to make money from it?
> No revenue was made from this feature either.
You definitely would have made some sales instantly with your userbase. The only way this can be true is if you refused any payouts because you saw it would be bad PR. I judge based on intentions. The choices Brave makes over and over show you guys are a shady affiliate type company with a mask of developer and privacy friendliness.
> Compare this with traffic attribution
This is really not the same thing. It's barely relevant. What Brave did is much closer to cookie stuffing. ie: zero value provided to the businesses. I have to now ask you to please not reply with a myopic technical or legal definition of cookie stuffing as you will otherwise do so. You are missing everyone's points on purpose. It's a strange coincidence and is only easy to understand when one realizes you are paid to do so.
Lastly, the first screenshot you linked is egregious. Thanks for providing an honest one. That is absolutely insane. You have an aggressive legal team, for sure. Anyone else would put "AD" float:right on that menu item. (If this was there and you cropped it out then actually I take back this criticism.)
You have a tough job mate. You have a shady employer and your job is to trick everyone into thinking they aren't shady even as they relentlessly do shady things.
I actually don't care about any of this stuff, I just don't like this community being lied to or manipulated. Hackernews is smart but can be manipulated just like reddit as you are seeing. You're only having luck because everyone here hates Google and tracking so much and so desperately wants to believe. But even if you guys do shady stuff I'm all for more competition in the browser and search space.
Anyway, what are the CPMs on your pops and the min daily buy/commitment and is anyone else actually making money with them? Is it pops or more like PPV (url based targeting?) I buy Opera and recently looked into your program.
You definitely would have made some sales instantly with your userbase. The only way this can be true is if you refused any payouts because you saw it would be bad PR. I judge based on intentions. The choices Brave makes over and over show you guys are a shady affiliate type company with a mask of developer and privacy friendliness.
> Compare this with traffic attribution
This is really not the same thing. It's barely relevant. What Brave did is much closer to cookie stuffing. ie: zero value provided to the businesses. I have to now ask you to please not reply with a myopic technical or legal definition of cookie stuffing as you will otherwise do so. You are missing everyone's points on purpose. It's a strange coincidence and is only easy to understand when one realizes you are paid to do so.
Lastly, the first screenshot you linked is egregious. Thanks for providing an honest one. That is absolutely insane. You have an aggressive legal team, for sure. Anyone else would put "AD" float:right on that menu item. (If this was there and you cropped it out then actually I take back this criticism.)
You have a tough job mate. You have a shady employer and your job is to trick everyone into thinking they aren't shady even as they relentlessly do shady things.
I actually don't care about any of this stuff, I just don't like this community being lied to or manipulated. Hackernews is smart but can be manipulated just like reddit as you are seeing. You're only having luck because everyone here hates Google and tracking so much and so desperately wants to believe. But even if you guys do shady stuff I'm all for more competition in the browser and search space.
Anyway, what are the CPMs on your pops and the min daily buy/commitment and is anyone else actually making money with them? Is it pops or more like PPV (url based targeting?) I buy Opera and recently looked into your program.
What about Safari?
Safari was covered in the aforementioned browser-privacy study as well: https://www.scss.tcd.ie/Doug.Leith/pubs/browser_privacy.pdf. It finished with Chrome and Firefox in 2nd place (behind Brave).
you work for Brave. I can't take what you say on face value
Please don't take my words for granted. Verify everything. If you wish to prod a little, I'm always happy to chat :-)
Appreciate you taking part in the conversation. So often people complain about companies not communicating like humans, but when they do people almost seem to get more pissed off. You can't win really.
Will this search engine have better filters, and an option to sort results?
It’s always bothered me about Google that there’s no sort feature, especially by date
It’s always bothered me about Google that there’s no sort feature, especially by date
Can you tell me more about the "better filters" request? Regarding sorting, that's great feedback. I'm curious how you would see this implemented. Would the sort by date arrange results in order of their modified date, created date (such as when they were published), or perhaps their first indexed date? There are a few other dates that could be considered too.
It shouldn't come as much of a surprise. Their attitude towards advertisement and cryptocurrency is the reddest flag imaginable.
Elaborate, please? The blockchain enables everybody to participate, earn, and support content creators in an low-friction, anonymous manner. Advertisements serve as a great way to introduce revenue into the system (by way of advertisers who wish to reach an audience). Brave pulls it all together into a single, OPTIONAL component, which guards the user's privacy and security by conducting its operation locally, on the user's device with client-side machine-learning. No red flags here.
Brave blocks webpage's existing ads then replace the ads with their own ad network that earns the website owner Brave-money that the website owner then has to redeem.
That tactic is definitely a red flag.
That tactic is definitely a red flag.
That's not how it works. Brave blocks third-party ads and trackers (which are known to be dangerous) on behalf of its users (the same users who were installing uBlock Origin in Chrome and Firefox before coming to Brave). This is a security and privacy necessity on the Web today.
Users are then able to opt-in, if they like, to a novel advertising platform within the Brave ecosystem. These users can earn rewards for their attention (70% of the associated ad-revenue). Ads are displayed within Brave and on the user's desktop; ads are not displayed in any publisher-owned space (e.g. a website or YouTube channel).
With these rewards, users are able to contribute to [verified] sites, channels, etc. The publisher/content-creator must already be verified to receive any rewards from users. If a user attempts to contribute to a non-verified site, the tokens remain on the user's device for up to 90 days.
This isn't much different from how PayPal allows you to send money to an arbitrary email address, regardless if it is associated with a verified PayPal account or not. This model simply addresses the problem of blocking harmful ads and trackers, while offering no alternative means of supporting those same content creators.
Users are then able to opt-in, if they like, to a novel advertising platform within the Brave ecosystem. These users can earn rewards for their attention (70% of the associated ad-revenue). Ads are displayed within Brave and on the user's desktop; ads are not displayed in any publisher-owned space (e.g. a website or YouTube channel).
With these rewards, users are able to contribute to [verified] sites, channels, etc. The publisher/content-creator must already be verified to receive any rewards from users. If a user attempts to contribute to a non-verified site, the tokens remain on the user's device for up to 90 days.
This isn't much different from how PayPal allows you to send money to an arbitrary email address, regardless if it is associated with a verified PayPal account or not. This model simply addresses the problem of blocking harmful ads and trackers, while offering no alternative means of supporting those same content creators.
Hi Jonathan, here is my hot take on the issue.
When a user installs uBlock Origin, they are attempting to protect themselves from ads, not just privacy, but because the ads themselves attempt to manipulate them into buying things.
When Brave blocks ads in one place, but shows others ads instead, the users are not actually protected from the ads, any potential money that may have been generated by the ads is effectively stolen by Brave.
It's smells to us like you are just stealing peoples content.
When a user installs uBlock Origin, they are attempting to protect themselves from ads, not just privacy, but because the ads themselves attempt to manipulate them into buying things.
When Brave blocks ads in one place, but shows others ads instead, the users are not actually protected from the ads, any potential money that may have been generated by the ads is effectively stolen by Brave.
It's smells to us like you are just stealing peoples content.
> When a user installs uBlock Origin, they are attempting to protect themselves from ads, not just privacy, but because the ads themselves attempt to manipulate them into buying things
I'm not sure where you're getting this statistic. Most people that I know, myself included, aren't trying to protect themselves from buying things, rather from annoying ads that clutter everything up and slow everything down. Perhaps brave isn't the best choice for you, but it certainly will be a good choice for a lot of people who are currently using adblockers.
I'm not sure where you're getting this statistic. Most people that I know, myself included, aren't trying to protect themselves from buying things, rather from annoying ads that clutter everything up and slow everything down. Perhaps brave isn't the best choice for you, but it certainly will be a good choice for a lot of people who are currently using adblockers.
I'm part of the group GP refers to. I have no interest in ads. I might even be aggressively against them in most contexts. At best, they are a nagging distraction, and worst they are manipulation. I understand the value they bring to creators but where possible I opt for subscriptions or donations rather than ads, and have very few qualms about it.
I'm part of this group too. Fuck the current state of online advertising in its entirety. It's manipulative and is driving the web into the ground.
I didn't quote any statistics. Perhaps I should have said, "some users" or I could have said "users are also protected from manipulation".
I think if you thought about it for a while you would object to a constant bombardment of messages that you are not cool enough, or popular enough, or attractive enough, or fit enough.
Or that when you searched for things you were shown the "best results" rather than whoever paid google the most for your attention.
Or if you were thinking of buying a thing one day, but decided not to because you decided you didn't need it, you might prefer not to be constantly convinced to change your mind and buy the thing. Buy the THING!
My iPad is too old for an ad blocker so I have to suffer constant abuse when surfing the web on it. Don't get me started on Apple.
I think if you thought about it for a while you would object to a constant bombardment of messages that you are not cool enough, or popular enough, or attractive enough, or fit enough.
Or that when you searched for things you were shown the "best results" rather than whoever paid google the most for your attention.
Or if you were thinking of buying a thing one day, but decided not to because you decided you didn't need it, you might prefer not to be constantly convinced to change your mind and buy the thing. Buy the THING!
My iPad is too old for an ad blocker so I have to suffer constant abuse when surfing the web on it. Don't get me started on Apple.
You're absolutely right that some people are not interested in ads, at all. And this is why they install content-blockers and more. This doesn't change the fact that many others install things like uBlock Origin for their security and privacy benefits. This is precisely why Brave ships with Brave Ads and Rewards disabled by default. We believe that the out of box experience should be blocking. This works for both parties: those who want the reduced noise, and those who want the added security/privacy. I hope this helps :)
I notice you didn't address one important part of my comment, that Brave is attempting to monetize other peoples intellectual property by stripping it of ads.
There is a big moral difference between a community of people blocking ads for their own protection, and a company blocking ads for profit.
--
When somebody reads a web page, but blocked the ads, I like to think the reader is saying, I'm interested in what you have to say, but I'm not spending money today.
When somebody uses the Brave browser and has opted in to other ads, I can only think the reader is saying, I'm interested in what you are saying, but fuck you, I'm not buying what you are selling, I'm going to check out these other ads, make some money for myself and for Brave, and If I see anything I like I'll buy there instead.
There is a big moral difference between a community of people blocking ads for their own protection, and a company blocking ads for profit.
--
When somebody reads a web page, but blocked the ads, I like to think the reader is saying, I'm interested in what you have to say, but I'm not spending money today.
When somebody uses the Brave browser and has opted in to other ads, I can only think the reader is saying, I'm interested in what you are saying, but fuck you, I'm not buying what you are selling, I'm going to check out these other ads, make some money for myself and for Brave, and If I see anything I like I'll buy there instead.
> Brave is attempting to monetize other peoples intellectual property by stripping it of ads.
Brave doesn't make money by blocking third-party ads; that's a privacy and security decision. Brave could default to no-blocking (which would be unwise, given the threat to users), and still have its own ad model of displaying ad notifications.
> …people blocking ads for their own protection…
This is why people install Brave; for the privacy and security benefits. This is the baseline experience in Brave.
> When somebody uses the Brave browser and has opted in to other ads…
Why do you assume people aren't using Brave for their own protection? For many people, including myself, advertising isn't the motivator of installing an ad/content blocker. The primary reason is the security/privacy risk of running a small app (which is what modern third-party digital ads are) on my machine.
So if the problem is security and privacy, and not advertising, it makes sense why somebody would opt to participate in an alternative advertising model which does not have the same security/privacy risks, and even rewards the user (with 70% of the ad revenue) for their attention.
> I'm going to check out these other ads, make some money for myself and for Brave…
And for the publisher, since the default configuration of Brave is to queue up auto-contributions for the verified sites you visit.
Brave doesn't make money by blocking third-party ads; that's a privacy and security decision. Brave could default to no-blocking (which would be unwise, given the threat to users), and still have its own ad model of displaying ad notifications.
> …people blocking ads for their own protection…
This is why people install Brave; for the privacy and security benefits. This is the baseline experience in Brave.
> When somebody uses the Brave browser and has opted in to other ads…
Why do you assume people aren't using Brave for their own protection? For many people, including myself, advertising isn't the motivator of installing an ad/content blocker. The primary reason is the security/privacy risk of running a small app (which is what modern third-party digital ads are) on my machine.
So if the problem is security and privacy, and not advertising, it makes sense why somebody would opt to participate in an alternative advertising model which does not have the same security/privacy risks, and even rewards the user (with 70% of the ad revenue) for their attention.
> I'm going to check out these other ads, make some money for myself and for Brave…
And for the publisher, since the default configuration of Brave is to queue up auto-contributions for the verified sites you visit.
>Why do you assume people aren't using Brave for their own protection?
OK, sure, lets rewrite it as "Brave is attempting to monetize other people intellectual property by striping it of ads for the protection of readers."
And sure, you could argue that you are providing a service to readers. Unfortunately, in order to provide tha service you must harm the content providers by denying them ad revenue, whether or not they are actually doing any harmful tracking.
This is why I believe content providers will come after you once you get big enough.
And you might be able to scare users, but I doubt you will be able to convince a court that just collecting the data is harmful in any meaningful way.
But come on, we're all tech folks here, Brave is only blocking 3rd party tracking, the 1st parties are still tracking what pages on their site you are reading. Facebook knows what you see on Facebook. Newscorp and Tencent and Apple all know what you are reading across their own IPs. Netflix knows what you are watching and Spotify knows what you are listening to. You have to be logged in after all.
And anyway, I'm sure 3rd parties have started serving up scripts that run 1st party now, just proxxied through the first party server.
Update: And to be clear, if you were doing this all for the good of society alone I would cheer you on, but because you are doing it for profit it becomes unethical in my mind.
Now I know nobody asked, but if I were Mr Eich and I wanted to do this is a way that _was_ ethical, I would attempt to create a parallel internet that was attractive to both users and content providers. I think both parties need to opt-in to this new trackingless internet.
I have a lot of crazy ideas for making this crazy parallel internet good for everybody, but I would be here all night.
OK, sure, lets rewrite it as "Brave is attempting to monetize other people intellectual property by striping it of ads for the protection of readers."
And sure, you could argue that you are providing a service to readers. Unfortunately, in order to provide tha service you must harm the content providers by denying them ad revenue, whether or not they are actually doing any harmful tracking.
This is why I believe content providers will come after you once you get big enough.
And you might be able to scare users, but I doubt you will be able to convince a court that just collecting the data is harmful in any meaningful way.
But come on, we're all tech folks here, Brave is only blocking 3rd party tracking, the 1st parties are still tracking what pages on their site you are reading. Facebook knows what you see on Facebook. Newscorp and Tencent and Apple all know what you are reading across their own IPs. Netflix knows what you are watching and Spotify knows what you are listening to. You have to be logged in after all.
And anyway, I'm sure 3rd parties have started serving up scripts that run 1st party now, just proxxied through the first party server.
Update: And to be clear, if you were doing this all for the good of society alone I would cheer you on, but because you are doing it for profit it becomes unethical in my mind.
Now I know nobody asked, but if I were Mr Eich and I wanted to do this is a way that _was_ ethical, I would attempt to create a parallel internet that was attractive to both users and content providers. I think both parties need to opt-in to this new trackingless internet.
I have a lot of crazy ideas for making this crazy parallel internet good for everybody, but I would be here all night.
Would you then say it's disengenous to listen to the tv or radio while browsing the internet with an ad blocker?
Considering their ads are opt-in this argument makes no sense. Which class of person both wants to “protect themselves from ads” and opts in?
Brave isn’t a browser I use but you guys are not even reading the comments you’re responding to.
Brave isn’t a browser I use but you guys are not even reading the comments you’re responding to.
People who are tricked into thinking they are helping content creators by watching the ads that Brave serves. People who feel like they might be stealing a contents creators work unless the watch the ads.
Why would anybody opt in to watch the ads otherwise?
Update: Sorry, I just ready below that _users_ are paid up to 70% to watch ads which I did not realize even though that is what is said above. Explains why you would opt in.
Why would anybody opt in to watch the ads otherwise?
Update: Sorry, I just ready below that _users_ are paid up to 70% to watch ads which I did not realize even though that is what is said above. Explains why you would opt in.
And what's wrong with that? Brave blocks adds then allows you to opt in to see their ads. If that some how is theft then so is blocking ads in there first place.
You've hit the nail on the head calling it the basic attention token. While you haven't literally replaced ads in the page you are still removing their ads then adding your own. You didn't replace the ad directly, but you've redirected the user's attention.
Brave blocks harmful third-party ads and trackers. This is a security and privacy matter, as these types of ads are actually small scripts/apps which run in the context of your local machine.
As malignant as third-party ads have become, they do generate revenue for content creators. As such, Brave didn't stop at "block, and let the creators figure it out." We did the work to propose a new approach to supporting content creators; one which doesn't cost the user their data/privacy in the process.
In Brave, user's have to opt-in to Ad Notifications. When they do, they set the limits (up to 10/hr) on how many ad notifications can be displayed. Matching happens locally, so the user's data never leaves their device. And 70% of each ad's revenue is allocated to the user's anonymous wallet, which can flow out to the sites they visit (and proportional to the amount of time they spend on those sites) each month.
This is indeed a replacement model; we cannot continue down the path we've been taking for 25 years. One which treats users like products, harvesting their data at every turn, and auctioning them off to a sea of third parties. There's a better way, and we're just seeing the start of it with the Brave model.
As malignant as third-party ads have become, they do generate revenue for content creators. As such, Brave didn't stop at "block, and let the creators figure it out." We did the work to propose a new approach to supporting content creators; one which doesn't cost the user their data/privacy in the process.
In Brave, user's have to opt-in to Ad Notifications. When they do, they set the limits (up to 10/hr) on how many ad notifications can be displayed. Matching happens locally, so the user's data never leaves their device. And 70% of each ad's revenue is allocated to the user's anonymous wallet, which can flow out to the sites they visit (and proportional to the amount of time they spend on those sites) each month.
This is indeed a replacement model; we cannot continue down the path we've been taking for 25 years. One which treats users like products, harvesting their data at every turn, and auctioning them off to a sea of third parties. There's a better way, and we're just seeing the start of it with the Brave model.
Keep digging.
Where can I buy these (banners?) and what's the min daily budget? I'm skeptical this will work long term as you're overlapping two of the worst sources of traffic: technically-inclined users and incentived attention. Would love to test it out for fun.
I would be interested to know what the conversion rate is like. Given users are literately paid to watch the ads, I'm sure it would be terrible. Worse even than a game were users have to watch an ad to get some in game currency.
CTR is at about 9% right now (industry is about 2%). The difference here is that the user gets to decide whether or not they participate, and to what degree (up to 10 ad notifications per hour presently). Ads are selected via a machine-learning component on the user's device, so with greater diversity of advertisers and inventory, relevancy increases. And, users are rewarded NOT for their clicks, but rather for their attention. If an ad notification appears, and is ignored, you're still rewarded 70% of the associated revenue.
We don't care what it does with the previous ad data, what's disturbing is that there is even a setting to opt-in to more ads in the first place. Many people (myself included) will be completely turned away because of that option. That's just the cost of doing business.
Person 1: Brave replaces existing ads, that’s bad
Someone from Brave: actually we don’t replace existing ads at all, here’s why
Person 2: no one cares what you do or don’t do with existing ads!
I don’t have any connection to Brave but I find it odd they’ve become some kind of hate figure here on HN. Their iOS client IMO is quite good. Their privacy is miles ahead of the other options. But merely by trying to be privacy first they get crap for not always being perfect. See also: Signal, OpenPGP, Firefox.
Someone from Brave: actually we don’t replace existing ads at all, here’s why
Person 2: no one cares what you do or don’t do with existing ads!
I don’t have any connection to Brave but I find it odd they’ve become some kind of hate figure here on HN. Their iOS client IMO is quite good. Their privacy is miles ahead of the other options. But merely by trying to be privacy first they get crap for not always being perfect. See also: Signal, OpenPGP, Firefox.
I didn’t realize Brave had become a “hate figure” here but it seems like the discussion in this thread took a hard turn to the kind of conspiratorial, reactionary, nasty “gotcha” reply behavior I come to Hackernews specifically to avoid. In this thread are multiple examples of the Brave employee saying Thing A and just getting mean-spirited responses reframing A as negatively as possible as if it’s an argument retort.
Example: “Oh this person works for Brave, don’t trust them.” Or in reply to the post explaining what sounds like a bug in the application being misread as a way to grift money from traffic, “No revenue made? So you got caught before you got paid?” Or the clarification that Brave browser ads are confined to the browser and OS UI followed by repetition of the same insisted point that they “block then replace browser ads,” while the rep seems to have explained quite clearly opt-in browser ads are not presented inline to the webpage content. It is, sorry to use a tired comparison, “Reddit behavior.”
I recently saw a note by dang in a Bitcoin thread about how crypto tends to generate repetitive arguments on HN and it seems like that blind spot for the community may have eclipsed Brave by association (maybe in addition to HN’s negativity towards anything ad related). I keep scrolling further expecting to learn something salient about why I shouldn’t trust Brave but instead I see a bunch of people beating on a community rep.
Example: “Oh this person works for Brave, don’t trust them.” Or in reply to the post explaining what sounds like a bug in the application being misread as a way to grift money from traffic, “No revenue made? So you got caught before you got paid?” Or the clarification that Brave browser ads are confined to the browser and OS UI followed by repetition of the same insisted point that they “block then replace browser ads,” while the rep seems to have explained quite clearly opt-in browser ads are not presented inline to the webpage content. It is, sorry to use a tired comparison, “Reddit behavior.”
I recently saw a note by dang in a Bitcoin thread about how crypto tends to generate repetitive arguments on HN and it seems like that blind spot for the community may have eclipsed Brave by association (maybe in addition to HN’s negativity towards anything ad related). I keep scrolling further expecting to learn something salient about why I shouldn’t trust Brave but instead I see a bunch of people beating on a community rep.
I wrote up a too-long message trying to rationalize some of the repeated animosity directed at Brave Inc in almost every single Brave-related post (for as long as I can remember seeing them on HN), but I'm beginning to think even discussing it at a meta-level would prompt some of the same old repetitive arguments on HN and not be worthwhile.
Instead, I'd like to just respond to this small bit of your comment, if you don't mind:
>I keep scrolling further expecting to learn something salient about why I shouldn’t trust Brave but instead I see a bunch of people beating on a community rep.
A lot of anti-Brave comments are flat out wrong, factually incorrect, or just pure conspiracy/hate. A lot of other anti-Brave comments used to be true but aren't anymore. A few anti-Brave comments still are researched and reasoned.
But it feels to me like any and all comments critiquing Brave instantly get either heated responses from Brave fans and/or dismissed entirely by Brave employees, regardless of their validity, which doesn't breed good discussion and typically devolves into argument and/or personal attacks (even from the Brave reps, which probably doesn't help their brand image).
Brave has made a lot of mistakes over the years (both in bugs and business decisions they've since reverted). From the company/rep's point of view, they've made mistakes, learned, and improved. From the haters' point of view, the company's laundry list of shady scandals has decimated any trust left of what their reps say, especially when defending what looks like The Next Big Scandal. When those same reps dismiss what is or used to be a legitimate concern (for example, injecting affiliate links into URLs) as just "Brave doesn't do that", it only reinforces whichever perceptions people already have about Brave (those for-Brave see haters with invalid critique, and those attacking Brave see a rep gaslighting or dismissing what they believe to be true).
I don't know what the solution to repair Brave's brand is for haters, but it's probably somewhere between acknowledging the mistakes of their past (instead of framing every response in the ultra-present-tense "Brave doesn't do that") and/or providing better educational materials for people to actually learn how Brave works instead of just vaguely knowing "they hide ads, but also show ads, but also something about cryptocurrency, but only if you watch their ads?"
Instead, I'd like to just respond to this small bit of your comment, if you don't mind:
>I keep scrolling further expecting to learn something salient about why I shouldn’t trust Brave but instead I see a bunch of people beating on a community rep.
A lot of anti-Brave comments are flat out wrong, factually incorrect, or just pure conspiracy/hate. A lot of other anti-Brave comments used to be true but aren't anymore. A few anti-Brave comments still are researched and reasoned.
But it feels to me like any and all comments critiquing Brave instantly get either heated responses from Brave fans and/or dismissed entirely by Brave employees, regardless of their validity, which doesn't breed good discussion and typically devolves into argument and/or personal attacks (even from the Brave reps, which probably doesn't help their brand image).
Brave has made a lot of mistakes over the years (both in bugs and business decisions they've since reverted). From the company/rep's point of view, they've made mistakes, learned, and improved. From the haters' point of view, the company's laundry list of shady scandals has decimated any trust left of what their reps say, especially when defending what looks like The Next Big Scandal. When those same reps dismiss what is or used to be a legitimate concern (for example, injecting affiliate links into URLs) as just "Brave doesn't do that", it only reinforces whichever perceptions people already have about Brave (those for-Brave see haters with invalid critique, and those attacking Brave see a rep gaslighting or dismissing what they believe to be true).
I don't know what the solution to repair Brave's brand is for haters, but it's probably somewhere between acknowledging the mistakes of their past (instead of framing every response in the ultra-present-tense "Brave doesn't do that") and/or providing better educational materials for people to actually learn how Brave works instead of just vaguely knowing "they hide ads, but also show ads, but also something about cryptocurrency, but only if you watch their ads?"
The problem is that trust takes so long to build and so little to destroy. I still won't install or use Brave because I have a nagging suspicion in the back of my mind that I'll wake up to a forced update tomorrow that goes against my interest. They have an insane tightrope to walk in a world where they need to support their work yet not corrupt their product in the name of profit. Thus far, they've made several decisions which have knocked them off that tightrope. Each time, the long road to regaining trust is lengthened and reset. If they go a couple years with a clean track record, I'll consider trying it again, but at this point the brand is entirely tainted for me. Importantly, it doesn't matter if my feeling is currently true, it's been informed by history.
Haters gonna hate.
This problem is all too common though in all parts of life. Someone does something with a good intention for the betterment of people/society and then some others who are not on the other side of the status quo have have to come bring negativity because all they have in them is destructive and constructive (hate vs compromise/support)
This problem is all too common though in all parts of life. Someone does something with a good intention for the betterment of people/society and then some others who are not on the other side of the status quo have have to come bring negativity because all they have in them is destructive and constructive (hate vs compromise/support)
This bullshit has nothing to do with Brave. Brendan Eich (Brave CEO) was cancelled years ago, and the mob is still after him. That's what going on really, it's cancel culture at its finest.
Won't anyone think of the poor homophobe?
Thank you for making my point
You're welcome. Someone should justify the imaginary boogeyman people cry about, it's no fun otherwise.
>Person 1: Brave replaces existing ads, that’s bad
>Someone from Brave: actually we don’t replace existing ads at all, here’s why
Me: Brave guy used a lot of words but what they said was they remove ads from one place and move them to another place, that's still replacing ads.
Me: Brave guy used a lot of words but what they said was they remove ads from one place and move them to another place, that's still replacing ads.
not if it's opt-in... if i install a firefox plugin that puts all pages full of ads, it's not firefox doing that.. it's me.
Did Firefox implement a nice button for you to turn it on? Did they sell the ads to the advertisers? Did they take a cut of the money? Did they trick you into thinking it was a good idea?
That's not you.
That's not you.
> Their privacy is miles ahead of the other options.
If by "other options" you're purely referring to "the 5 most popular browsers", you're mostly right. Brave still uses much more telemetry than UnGoogled Chromium and Vivaldi, so make of that what you will.
If by "other options" you're purely referring to "the 5 most popular browsers", you're mostly right. Brave still uses much more telemetry than UnGoogled Chromium and Vivaldi, so make of that what you will.
I reviewed Vivaldi back in 2019 on Twitter (see https://twitter.com/jonathansampson/status/11653581559220592...), and later again for an official blog post (see https://brave.com/brave-tops-browser-first-run-network-traff...). It was indeed much better than many of the other top browsers. Brave does, however, still come out on top when you consider Vivaldi proxies few, if any, requests to Google.
On the topic of telemetry, I just updated it and launched a new window to find an immediate call to vialdi.com/rep/rep passing along 25 distinct pieces of information, including what appears to be a distinct 16-character ID (key: _id). Another 6-character ID (key: pv_id) was also passed along for the ride. I'd have to take a closer look into the traffic to determine how sticky these are to the user, device, or browser instance.
Anybody interested can download Telerik Fiddler (or the HTTP Toolkit) and conduct a cursory review of the network activity as well. Vivaldi does still come out near the top of the list of browsers though. For example, they don't send keystrokes to Google or Bing behind the scenes as you type. That's a unique restraint not commonly observed in browsers today.
On the topic of telemetry, I just updated it and launched a new window to find an immediate call to vialdi.com/rep/rep passing along 25 distinct pieces of information, including what appears to be a distinct 16-character ID (key: _id). Another 6-character ID (key: pv_id) was also passed along for the ride. I'd have to take a closer look into the traffic to determine how sticky these are to the user, device, or browser instance.
Anybody interested can download Telerik Fiddler (or the HTTP Toolkit) and conduct a cursory review of the network activity as well. Vivaldi does still come out near the top of the list of browsers though. For example, they don't send keystrokes to Google or Bing behind the scenes as you type. That's a unique restraint not commonly observed in browsers today.
Vivaldi user here. If anyone is interested in Vivaldi's network requests, feel free to check their blog post that addresses the same: https://vivaldi.com/blog/decoding-network-activity-in-vivald...
We're discussing 2 distinctly different ad models:
1) Forced upon the user, rewards them in no way for their attention, harvests their data, auctions them off to a sea of third-parties, and may in fact be dropping malicious scripts onto their machine for client-site execution.
and
2) An opt-in model which harvests no user data, rewards users with 70% of the revenue for the ads they choose to view (the user controls frequency caps), and gives everybody (not just the wealthy or well-off) a way to support content creators.
And you feel the second one is the "disturbing" model?
1) Forced upon the user, rewards them in no way for their attention, harvests their data, auctions them off to a sea of third-parties, and may in fact be dropping malicious scripts onto their machine for client-site execution.
and
2) An opt-in model which harvests no user data, rewards users with 70% of the revenue for the ads they choose to view (the user controls frequency caps), and gives everybody (not just the wealthy or well-off) a way to support content creators.
And you feel the second one is the "disturbing" model?
I actually don't mind seeing ads for stuff I like, and the idea to redirect revenu to support content creators is appealing.
Right now I see 0 ads, maybe will get fancy and try Brave for fun
As much as I know you want to chime in here, I'm not going to play any games where you draw the goalposts. My current options are the following:
1. I can continue to use Vivaldi and uBlock origin as a completely open-source and so far flawless combo
or
2. Go out of my way to switch to a browser with dubious privacy claims, a goddamn personal cryptocurrency and (the cherry on top) a developer who spent the better half of his afternoon tracking me down and asking me why I don't like their browser.
I think I'm good.
1. I can continue to use Vivaldi and uBlock origin as a completely open-source and so far flawless combo
or
2. Go out of my way to switch to a browser with dubious privacy claims, a goddamn personal cryptocurrency and (the cherry on top) a developer who spent the better half of his afternoon tracking me down and asking me why I don't like their browser.
I think I'm good.
Happy to hear that you're staying safe online. Nobody is tracking you down though. You and I happen to be on the same page, engaging in conversation. Check my comment history and you'll see that you make up only a small fraction of the individuals to whom I have responded. All the best to you though; sincerely wish you well.
You have more patience than I would have had in this thread. I guess it's your job to be patient though, or at least to deal with occasionally nasty elements of the community.
Is Vivaldi open source? The only reason I don't use it is because it's closed, so this would be great news!
No. They publish their changes to Chromium's code, and kind of dodge answering that question: https://help.vivaldi.com/desktop/privacy/is-vivaldi-open-sou...
They do not publish any code relating to the UI, but the Chromium part is absolutely open: https://vivaldi.com/source/
Also, Vivaldi is entirely moddable.
Also, Vivaldi is entirely moddable.
Why Vivaldi over Firefox?
No they didn't. This is misinformation. They didn't replace ads in a webpage.
They displayed ads via desktop notifications or push-notifications. The end user opts in for this.
They are just moving the ads from one place to another. Its the same thing.
It isn't
This is such a blatant lie. No wonder why fake news is widespread
> in an low-friction, anonymous manner
Ah yes completely anonymous, unless you want to withdraw https://support.brave.com/hc/en-us/articles/360032158891-Wha...
Ah yes completely anonymous, unless you want to withdraw https://support.brave.com/hc/en-us/articles/360032158891-Wha...
It's crypto, cashing out requires identification according to government laws unless you're a money launderer.
Honey, a browser extension that harvests user data and injects its own affiliate links was acquired by Paypal for $4 Billion.
Publishers are shilling amazon's prime day because they're all amazon affiliates wanting to earn their commission. Similarly, all those "price comparison" and coupon sites are injecting affiliate codes and just redirecting you to the merchant.
I don't see how Brave did something egregious injecting affiliate codes to earn commission from certain vendors, if one of their users signed up for a service. Keep in mind the dominant, alternative browser (Chrome), built by an advertising company, is privacy hostile and trying to use new tracking technology (FLOC) as they phase out cookies. Firefox is kept alive largely by $ paid by Google and seems to be getting worse with each release also. I'd rather see a competitive browser that doesn't have to take $$ from Google to stay alive.
Publishers are shilling amazon's prime day because they're all amazon affiliates wanting to earn their commission. Similarly, all those "price comparison" and coupon sites are injecting affiliate codes and just redirecting you to the merchant.
I don't see how Brave did something egregious injecting affiliate codes to earn commission from certain vendors, if one of their users signed up for a service. Keep in mind the dominant, alternative browser (Chrome), built by an advertising company, is privacy hostile and trying to use new tracking technology (FLOC) as they phase out cookies. Firefox is kept alive largely by $ paid by Google and seems to be getting worse with each release also. I'd rather see a competitive browser that doesn't have to take $$ from Google to stay alive.
Patching a few things in chrome is radically easier than maintaining and improving a completely different browser engine. And just because Google pays some money to firefox for their own selfish reason to not be caught in monopoly busting doesn’t create any twisted incentives for Firefox. It is the privacy-oriented browser fighting for a worthy case. Also, it is improving all the time - it’s just that for some reason the few missteps are way overpronounced.
> Also, it is improving all the time - it’s just that for some reason the few missteps are way overpronounced.
I don't understand why Firefox gets this benefit of doubt and other browsers (e.g. Brave) do not.
I don't understand why Firefox gets this benefit of doubt and other browsers (e.g. Brave) do not.
Well for one, because Mozilla has contributed significantly to the world and have a long history of doing so. (Thunderbird, mdn)
Brave's co-founder (and CEO) is also the co-founder of Mozilla. Our other co-founder (now CTO) was also an engineer at Mozilla for many years, and behind many of those contributions (several other Brave staff is directly connected to Mozilla as well). They started Brave in the same spirit, to improve that which is broken, and create a better, more equitable Web for all.
Thanks, that's a good point. BAT and the associated concept of rewarding content creators or Brave Search could be seen as contributions to the world as well, I think.
Almost all of Mozilla's revenue is from Google. I don't see how bad incentives could possibly be avoided, assuming Mitchell Baker wishes to keep herself in the lifestyle to which she has become accustomed. I do believe they engage in copious moral bargaining to maintain their image as plucky underdogs sticking it to the man.
Apparently, they have their own search index, which they say covers ~95% of queries, and if the results aren't in the index, it will then get it from Google or Bing.
I'd love some more details on how this works. They probably aren't scraping the whole web. Are they just mirroring Bing and Google indexes? They seem to have their own page ranking algorithm that they're hoping to get trained.
I'd love some more details on how this works. They probably aren't scraping the whole web. Are they just mirroring Bing and Google indexes? They seem to have their own page ranking algorithm that they're hoping to get trained.
I found the announcement blog post. Brave Search is a rebranding of Tailcat's product, which Brave acquired in March.
https://brave.com/brave-search-beta/
https://brave.com/brave-search-beta/
@dang, this seems like a good candidate to replace the current link of this post.
In December '19 the company that would end up being acquired by Brave did a number of blog posts [0] where they explained the tech. The short answer is 'a lot of word2vec'.
[0] https://www.0x65.dev/
[0] https://www.0x65.dev/
Funny how their posts show such a different approach to their browser than Braves. E.g. forking Firefox not Chromium, implementing functionality as extension instead of in browser where possible...
> If all browsers end up using Blink (Google), the Web will suffer as developers will only optimize and test for the Blink rendering engine.
Am I the only one that thinks that this would be a good thing? Like the entire industry sharing the same core open source technology? Write a website once and it works perfectly across all platforms?
Am I the only one that thinks that this would be a good thing? Like the entire industry sharing the same core open source technology? Write a website once and it works perfectly across all platforms?
No monopoly or monoculture, even if open source, is good. It is not just about the features that you think makes your life better, you have also to consider the potential catastrophic bugs that could be exploited and leave everyone without an alternative.
Evolution only happens when there is divergence and competition.
Evolution only happens when there is divergence and competition.
Well we're already effectively at monoculture. The only other rendering engine that has any meaningful market share is Apple's fork of Webkit.
I disagree that with the proposition that a single open source project with broad industry representation would hinder evolution.
Companies like Google and Microsoft don't compete on their ability to support the various web specs, but on quality of the web applications they can deliver to customers. Competition in this space will continue to drive innovation even with a single agreed upon rendering engine.
It would, however, limit the ability of a company like Apple to hobble their only-supported browser such that web apps can't compete with native ones.
I disagree that with the proposition that a single open source project with broad industry representation would hinder evolution.
Companies like Google and Microsoft don't compete on their ability to support the various web specs, but on quality of the web applications they can deliver to customers. Competition in this space will continue to drive innovation even with a single agreed upon rendering engine.
It would, however, limit the ability of a company like Apple to hobble their only-supported browser such that web apps can't compete with native ones.
> market share
If there is at least one alternative that is significant, then by definition it's not "effectively a monoculture".
In any case, market share is the least important factor here. As long as we have an intolerant minority (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27262240) that does not want be subject to Chromium as the only open source project, we will be fine.
Mozilla is screwing up badly, and I switched to Brave mostly because I believe that they are building a stronger artillery to fight surveillance capitalism (as in, Mozilla gives you wishy-washy feel-good words, Brave gives you money), but this does not mean that Mozilla needs to go away. Quite the opposite: I still hope that we see a "Next acquires Apple for negative $400 million" story. If Firefox builds integration with Brave's network and also adopts BAT, I would go back to it in a heartbeat.
> I disagree that (...) would hinder evolution. Competition in this space will continue to drive innovation even with a single agreed upon rendering engine.
God, no! The worrying thing is not that the development of the web specs would stagnate. The problem is that the development would only happen in the direction that benefits them and that they would be completely unchecked.
If there is at least one alternative that is significant, then by definition it's not "effectively a monoculture".
In any case, market share is the least important factor here. As long as we have an intolerant minority (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27262240) that does not want be subject to Chromium as the only open source project, we will be fine.
Mozilla is screwing up badly, and I switched to Brave mostly because I believe that they are building a stronger artillery to fight surveillance capitalism (as in, Mozilla gives you wishy-washy feel-good words, Brave gives you money), but this does not mean that Mozilla needs to go away. Quite the opposite: I still hope that we see a "Next acquires Apple for negative $400 million" story. If Firefox builds integration with Brave's network and also adopts BAT, I would go back to it in a heartbeat.
> I disagree that (...) would hinder evolution. Competition in this space will continue to drive innovation even with a single agreed upon rendering engine.
God, no! The worrying thing is not that the development of the web specs would stagnate. The problem is that the development would only happen in the direction that benefits them and that they would be completely unchecked.
> Evolution only happens when there is divergence and competition.
Not when we can a have a logic stable and well made standard. Like the metric system. I am pretty sure that I would have a problem with any alternative to the metric system. The more we are to use it the better it become.
Evolution can and thrive through cooperation and mutual aid. I would be fine with having one standard implementation of a browser engine if it was not rule by a greedy corporate like Google, Apple or Microsoft.
Not when we can a have a logic stable and well made standard. Like the metric system. I am pretty sure that I would have a problem with any alternative to the metric system. The more we are to use it the better it become.
Evolution can and thrive through cooperation and mutual aid. I would be fine with having one standard implementation of a browser engine if it was not rule by a greedy corporate like Google, Apple or Microsoft.
The problem there is that metric basically equates to math at the end of the day, I don't think those are directly comparable. It would be very strange (and new) to have one and only one implementation of an entire class of software, instead of a technical standard with multiple different implementations.
Chromium is nominally open source - in practice it's controlled by Google employees in any way that matters. So you would literally be handing full control over the web-experience to Google.
Nothing would stop it being forked. If for example, Microsoft wanted something added then they could fork it; add their code and use that in Edge.
Nothing stops them but considering they've gone the route of "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em" after fighting for so long, I doubt they're likely to diverge significantly at this stage.
Problem is, this means ceding what amounts to control of the browser, and so, the internet experience, to a privacy invasive megacorp.
Were it a nonprofit trust, I'd be right there with you. But not a for-profit company, and sure as HELL not Google.
Were it a nonprofit trust, I'd be right there with you. But not a for-profit company, and sure as HELL not Google.
You surely are too young to remember the IE6 shithole monopoly we were all in when - MOZILLA - ALONE saved us.
It's not that having a common rendering engine for everyone would be bad. What's bad is having 1 company (or a few) for-profit companies controlling that rendering engine.
They don't give a shit about you!
It's not that having a common rendering engine for everyone would be bad. What's bad is having 1 company (or a few) for-profit companies controlling that rendering engine.
They don't give a shit about you!
> all platforms
Chrome doesn’t even support all platforms. It probably wouldn’t run on my car’s display for example. If the web followed an open standard that wouldn’t be a problem: the car manufacturer could make their own browser.
And not everyone wants to use chrome/blink because the development is in practice entirely run my google who do not have consumer interests in mind.
Chrome doesn’t even support all platforms. It probably wouldn’t run on my car’s display for example. If the web followed an open standard that wouldn’t be a problem: the car manufacturer could make their own browser.
And not everyone wants to use chrome/blink because the development is in practice entirely run my google who do not have consumer interests in mind.
Depends mostly on the terms you choose to evaluate it. Certainly that is one upside, but the downsides are pretty clear as well. Chromium is an open-source base but it is still very much spearheaded and dragged by the whims of Google, and if there is no other game in town they have even less of a reason to avoid decision that might not be in the best interest of users.
Additionally, you lose even more meaningful competition that drives improvement. Obviously you don't lose it all as your different chromium flavors do implement different bells and whistles but those are much narrower in scope.
It continues to be ironic and concerning that Firefox exists at the whims of Google paying to be the default search, but in some ways that helps them with potential antitrust cases as well. I think we have a lot more to lose than gain if we fully collapse into a Blink/Chromium singularity.
Additionally, you lose even more meaningful competition that drives improvement. Obviously you don't lose it all as your different chromium flavors do implement different bells and whistles but those are much narrower in scope.
It continues to be ironic and concerning that Firefox exists at the whims of Google paying to be the default search, but in some ways that helps them with potential antitrust cases as well. I think we have a lot more to lose than gain if we fully collapse into a Blink/Chromium singularity.
This site works best in IE6 at 800x600.
Those were the days! I was just explaining to my children yesterday how computer games were played in 640x480 when I was their age. I remember designing websites for that resolution too; still impresses me what we were able to do with so few pixels, lol.
Sounds like they built their index by collecting Google search queries done by the users of their browser extension. Suddenly Brave's "completely independent index" doesn't sound quite as impressive.
https://www.0x65.dev/blog/2019-12-05/a-new-search-engine.htm...
https://www.0x65.dev/blog/2019-12-05/a-new-search-engine.htm...
why is Brave calling them Tailcat? The company was Cliqz, not Tailcat.
Word2vec has its limitations... I assume by now they've trained their own GPT-3-like model on the data...
So, note that Brave brought in the Cliqz/Tailcat team to build this: While it's a "new search engine", I'm guessing the data and algorithms they were working on previously have all made it into this project at some point. Cliqz launched in 2015, so there's a number of years of work put in.
I would also highly recommend the blog post series [1] from Cliqz talking about the tech behind the search.
[1] - https://0x65.dev/
[1] - https://0x65.dev/
I was involved with the cliqz search engine and used their browser for a while. Great people with excellent integrity.
Very sad about what happened. Had very high hopes for you guys (more than from brave).
I know TailCat is open source... But what about Brave Search? Any clue?
I know TailCat is open source... But what about Brave Search? Any clue?
Check this recent podcast with Brave‘s founder, where, among other things, he is talking about how the search is implemented: https://podcasts.apple.com/de/podcast/modern-finance/id13386...
Non-Apple link
https://www.modern.finance/brave-browser/
https://www.modern.finance/brave-browser/
Never heard of this show before, but it got a new subscriber out of me. Thanks for the link to this!
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I still wouldn't use it since it falls back to Bing or Google.
You're referring to Fallback Mixing, which is off by default. You have to enable it in https://search.brave.com/settings. When enabled, this feature will (at times) pull in results from Google via an anonymous query, routed through the browser. Read more about it here: https://search.brave.com/help/google-fallback
> Note that choosing this option has no effect on your privacy. If you happen to have a Google account, Google will not be able to associate your query with this account.
I'm confused about "routed through the browser" -- is the browser talking to Google directly, but without sending the login cookies, and then hoping Google doesn't associate searches from your IP with your identity?
I'm confused about "routed through the browser" -- is the browser talking to Google directly, but without sending the login cookies, and then hoping Google doesn't associate searches from your IP with your identity?
Correct, a query is issued from your browser but without any cookies. While it's true your IP address tags along for the ride, the IP address isn't typically how users are tracked on Google-scale properties. Due to NAT and more, your IP address is not exclusively yours. It can represent many people at once, and over time. That said, if you are not comfortable with the idea of Fallback Mixing, you do not need to enable the feature.
At the very least I suggest modifying the text on the page as it is misleading.
https://www.whitecase.com/publications/alert/court-confirms-...
> Note that choosing this option has no effect on your privacy.
https://www.whitecase.com/publications/alert/court-confirms-...
This has not been my experience. Comparing results with Google, Startpage, and a Searx instance with only Google enabled reveals that the results are almost always from Google. Sometimes they merge multiple results that share a domain.
I decided to add them to the "Semi-Independent" category of my collection of indexing search engines: https://seirdy.one/2021/03/10/search-engines-with-own-indexe...
I decided to add them to the "Semi-Independent" category of my collection of indexing search engines: https://seirdy.one/2021/03/10/search-engines-with-own-indexe...
Mixing with Google results only can happen after opt-in and only in Brave browser. You can see if a single query has been mixed clicking on the `Info`, or check the independence metrics on the `Settings` tab.
The fact that you see results similar to Google for popular queries is a by-product of the fact that our ranking is trained using anonymous query-log. There is plenty of references to the methodology (https://0x65.dev/).
The fact that we are similar to Google on certain types of queries, is good (at from the perspective of human assessment). It's easy to find other types of queries for which we are not similar to Google. It would be rather stupid if we were to "use google" on easy to solve queries but not on the complicated ones, don’t you think? In any case, very nice article besides a couple of miss-conceptions (like this one), will bookmark.
Disclaimer: work at Brave search, used to work at Cliqz
The fact that you see results similar to Google for popular queries is a by-product of the fact that our ranking is trained using anonymous query-log. There is plenty of references to the methodology (https://0x65.dev/).
The fact that we are similar to Google on certain types of queries, is good (at from the perspective of human assessment). It's easy to find other types of queries for which we are not similar to Google. It would be rather stupid if we were to "use google" on easy to solve queries but not on the complicated ones, don’t you think? In any case, very nice article besides a couple of miss-conceptions (like this one), will bookmark.
Disclaimer: work at Brave search, used to work at Cliqz
That makes a bit more sense; I just read the blog posts. I'm concerned about the effects of optimizing against Google (namely, the extremely similar results); I don't think I understand the point of an alternative if it tries to replicate a competitor to this degree. The whole idea I was going for in that article was a diversity of information sources: if one engine isn't giving the results you want, try another.
Right now, users who want Google results and privacy can use a Searx instance or Startpage.
I updated the article to fix the inaccuracy. Diff: https://git.sr.ht/~seirdy/seirdy.one/commit/ddeeb36248ce5318...
Any other fact-checks are welcome.
Right now, users who want Google results and privacy can use a Searx instance or Startpage.
I updated the article to fix the inaccuracy. Diff: https://git.sr.ht/~seirdy/seirdy.one/commit/ddeeb36248ce5318...
Any other fact-checks are welcome.
You bring a very good point on the diversity of information sources, which is something we plan to attack in the near future with open ranking [0]
In my opinion having similar results to Google will facilitate adoption. After all, Google is pretty good for many types of queries (not all), and people in general have strong habits.
The fact that we are similar with our own index is great. It means that we have the power of deviating from it when needed, as we mature/evolve.
Allow me to repurposed your statement on why not use startpage if you want Google-like results: if tomorrow Google disappears (or for some reason becomes unusable), brave search will continue to operate as normal (similar to old Google). What will happen to searx or startpage? What till happen to ddg or swisscows if the provider turning bad is Microsoft. IMHO, no matter how much reranking or nice features they you put on top, unless you do not control the search results themselves, diversity can only be superficial.
Sorry for the "rant". Thanks a lot for the inputs and for updating the doc, appreciate it.
[0] https://brave.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/goggles.pdf
In my opinion having similar results to Google will facilitate adoption. After all, Google is pretty good for many types of queries (not all), and people in general have strong habits.
The fact that we are similar with our own index is great. It means that we have the power of deviating from it when needed, as we mature/evolve.
Allow me to repurposed your statement on why not use startpage if you want Google-like results: if tomorrow Google disappears (or for some reason becomes unusable), brave search will continue to operate as normal (similar to old Google). What will happen to searx or startpage? What till happen to ddg or swisscows if the provider turning bad is Microsoft. IMHO, no matter how much reranking or nice features they you put on top, unless you do not control the search results themselves, diversity can only be superficial.
Sorry for the "rant". Thanks a lot for the inputs and for updating the doc, appreciate it.
[0] https://brave.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/goggles.pdf
Brave Search doesn't fall-back to Google; not unless you have enabled Fallback Mixing in https://search.brave.com/settings/. Brave Search has its own index; the results may resemble those of other engines at times, but they aren't pulled from those engines (again, noting the exception of Fallback Mixing, an optional feature offered to the user via Settings).
I'm testing on Firefox and the Tor browser right now, JS disabled. I also disabled cookies in Firefox. Searches for "Seirdy", "Neovim", "gccgo", and others return results identical to Google, Startpage, and Searx instances with only Google enabled. No other independent engine of all the 25 other English independently-indexing engines I compared in the article has had this happen; identical pages on all the other engines are nearly impossible to find for advanced/uncommon queries.
90% of queries being identical to Google but different from the 25 other independent engines is one hell of a coincidence.
Archived example:
Brave results for "gccgo": https://web.archive.org/web/20210622172743/https://search.br...
Google results for "gccgo" (proxied through Startpage): https://web.archive.org/web/20210622172939/https://startpage...
If this is a bug, it's very serious and needs to be publicly disclosed.
Edit: more examples:
Brave results for "oppenheimer": https://web.archive.org/web/20210622173647/https://search.br...
Google results for "Oppenheimer" (proxied through Startpage): https://web.archive.org/web/20210622173658/https://startpage...
90% of queries being identical to Google but different from the 25 other independent engines is one hell of a coincidence.
Archived example:
Brave results for "gccgo": https://web.archive.org/web/20210622172743/https://search.br...
Google results for "gccgo" (proxied through Startpage): https://web.archive.org/web/20210622172939/https://startpage...
If this is a bug, it's very serious and needs to be publicly disclosed.
Edit: more examples:
Brave results for "oppenheimer": https://web.archive.org/web/20210622173647/https://search.br...
Google results for "Oppenheimer" (proxied through Startpage): https://web.archive.org/web/20210622173658/https://startpage...
As a counterexample, I searched for something very obscure (only three pages on startpage) expecting to see them pulling in results from startpage to cover the long tail. I was surprised to see different results, suggesting their index is much larger than I assumed.
The query was "retail snap incentive program"
Edit: All your queries are for relatively popular terms. I wouldn't be surprised if there's just a clearly right top set of pages.
The query was "retail snap incentive program"
Edit: All your queries are for relatively popular terms. I wouldn't be surprised if there's just a clearly right top set of pages.
> I wouldn't be surprised if there's just a clearly right top set of pages.
I would be astounded! Why would DDG, Bing, etc. not use it? Different search indices and engines should practically always have differences in results, as ranking results is very fuzzy and dependent on the available data.
I would be astounded! Why would DDG, Bing, etc. not use it? Different search indices and engines should practically always have differences in results, as ranking results is very fuzzy and dependent on the available data.
Interesting. I couldn't reproduce those results. Certain queries did produce _very_ identical results, but others did not. In some of those cases Google and Startpage did better.
I don't see a fallback mixing option on that page. Is it called 'Fallback Mixing' on that settings page? Also, these results are pulled from google and bing it seems for every query I do. seems like maybe some reranking is happening. And the query completions are from Bing. So you are sending everybody's queries to third parties. Not very private.
It does not appear that they are exposing all possible settings configs on mobile as fallback mixing is not shown as an option for me there. This seems like an oversight to me.
Fallback Mixing is only available to Brave on desktop and Android at this time. Apologies for any confusion.
Why is it only available on Brave? Doesn't make any sense.
Because you cannot issue a cross-site request to Google from the client due to CORS policies. This feature required work in the Brave browser itself, so that the application would serve as a pipeline for the request on behalf of the search page itself.
What incentive do Google and Bing have to share free SERP data to Brave in an anonymous channel?
They aren't sharing it with Brave directly, but rather with users. The query is issued via the participating user's Brave instance. This data then supplements what Brave Search has found, and assists Brave Search in presenting better results to that user, and others, in the future.
This sounds like a dishonest way of bypassing payment for Google search API by impersonating a request from a user.
It's still a request from the user; the user consents to issuing these requests on behalf of Brave Search when they opt-in to Fallback Mixing. Anybody can issue calls to Google's search engine.
I just tested an image search on Bing (https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=test) and Brave Search (https://search.brave.com/images?q=test) and it definitely appears that Brave is falling back to Bing as the results are highly identical, especially compared to Google (https://www.google.com/search?q=test).
They mention that image search is 100% bing. Not sure if this is planned to be replaced by their own implementation later.
"However for some features, like searching for images, Brave Search will fetch results from Microsoft Bing."
"However for some features, like searching for images, Brave Search will fetch results from Microsoft Bing."
Indeed, we lean heavily on Bing for image search. With time and maturation, this will change I'm sure. That said, when Bing lacked "tank man" results recently, Brave Search still yielded results (although the quality wasn't what we'd like to see; still a beta product. Screenshots here: https://twitter.com/BraveSampson/status/1400926207416410113). Crawl, walk, run. We're just getting started
Presumably the fallback happens server side, and presumably the google/bing queries are cloaked so your IP isn't making it to google/bing.
Curious why you wouldn't use bing/google even if your queries are "proxied" through Brave servers? (Assuming Brave isn't also sending your IP, etc, when they submit the query to google/bing)
Curious why you wouldn't use bing/google even if your queries are "proxied" through Brave servers? (Assuming Brave isn't also sending your IP, etc, when they submit the query to google/bing)
Fallback can be turned off with an easy toggle in the settings: https://search.brave.com/settings
If that is the case, what search engine do you currently use?
What do you use? Doesn't DDG use Bing as well?
Reminder that Brave has done some morally questionable things in the past:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brave_(web_browser)#Controvers...
They've since corrected both of those things, but those are enough for me to choose not to trust them as an organization.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brave_(web_browser)#Controvers...
They've since corrected both of those things, but those are enough for me to choose not to trust them as an organization.
You make it sound like Brave has intentionally done wrong; that isn't the case. Brave is designed in every way to preclude abuse from the design stage, and with a Can't Be Evil mindset, as opposed to the Don't Be Evil of Google. If you have questions about Brave, or Brave Search, we're always happy to chat.
- 2018 Rewards Update documented at https://brave.com/rewards-update/
- Affiliate Codes explained at https://brave.com/referral-codes-in-suggested-sites/
- The Tor/DNS issue resulted from https://brave.com/privacy-updates-6/
- 2018 Rewards Update documented at https://brave.com/rewards-update/
- Affiliate Codes explained at https://brave.com/referral-codes-in-suggested-sites/
- The Tor/DNS issue resulted from https://brave.com/privacy-updates-6/
> You make it sound like Brave has intentionally done wrong;
They're not saying Brave did anything intentionally wrong, they're just big enough mistakes that it's not possible for them, personally, to trust the organization.
> those are enough for me to choose not to trust them as an organization
They're not saying Brave did anything intentionally wrong, they're just big enough mistakes that it's not possible for them, personally, to trust the organization.
> those are enough for me to choose not to trust them as an organization
then what about this?:
> On 6 June 2020, a Twitter user pointed out that Brave inserts affiliate referral codes when users type a URL of Binance into the address bar, which earns Brave money. Further research revealed that Brave redirects the URLs of other cryptocurrency exchange websites, too. In response to the backlash from the users, Brave's CEO apologized and called it a "mistake" and said "we're correcting".
Seems intentional... Don't insult our intelligence and tell us that this was an "accident" or "unintended mistaken".
> On 6 June 2020, a Twitter user pointed out that Brave inserts affiliate referral codes when users type a URL of Binance into the address bar, which earns Brave money. Further research revealed that Brave redirects the URLs of other cryptocurrency exchange websites, too. In response to the backlash from the users, Brave's CEO apologized and called it a "mistake" and said "we're correcting".
Seems intentional... Don't insult our intelligence and tell us that this was an "accident" or "unintended mistaken".
That was addressed in my comment (the one you're responding to) with this link: https://brave.com/referral-codes-in-suggested-sites/.
Briefly, we added a way for users to support Brave without having to make financial contributions. They could simply opt to use one of our affiliate codes for a few poplar sites/services.
We added a feature to Brave which responded to user search input, and offered affiliate links for relevant results. You can see a screenshot of what that looked like at https://brave.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/image3.png. This didn't involve any user data, didn't rewrite links on pages, didn't redirect network requests, or touch the area of privacy/security in any way. Seemed like a good idea :)
When the feature actually launched, users quickly realized that the logic was handling fully qualified URLs in additional to search input. You can see a screenshot of that at https://brave.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/image2-1.png. This was the mistake that needed to be corrected.
I hope that helps clarify things a little. Again, there was no impact to user data or privacy, and Brave made $0 on this feature. Thankfully, our community is attentive, and yields prompt feedback when mistakes are made. Fortunately we were able to resolve the issue quickly and get a fix out to users.
Briefly, we added a way for users to support Brave without having to make financial contributions. They could simply opt to use one of our affiliate codes for a few poplar sites/services.
We added a feature to Brave which responded to user search input, and offered affiliate links for relevant results. You can see a screenshot of what that looked like at https://brave.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/image3.png. This didn't involve any user data, didn't rewrite links on pages, didn't redirect network requests, or touch the area of privacy/security in any way. Seemed like a good idea :)
When the feature actually launched, users quickly realized that the logic was handling fully qualified URLs in additional to search input. You can see a screenshot of that at https://brave.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/image2-1.png. This was the mistake that needed to be corrected.
I hope that helps clarify things a little. Again, there was no impact to user data or privacy, and Brave made $0 on this feature. Thankfully, our community is attentive, and yields prompt feedback when mistakes are made. Fortunately we were able to resolve the issue quickly and get a fix out to users.
So "can't be evil" then "whoops, that bit of evil was an honest mistake".
I appreciate the response! I stand by what I said, but I do appreciate you adding your perspective and sharing links so that others can read what Brave as an organization has to say about these incidents.
Fair enough; I can respect that :)
Always happy to chat if anybody has any other questions about Brave.
Always happy to chat if anybody has any other questions about Brave.
Seriously. For a privacy focused org to have these moral failings makes me skeptical they won't abuse users' trust in the future. I still don't think it's right to accept donations on behalf of someone you have no prior agreement with.
That's a misleading way to frame it; Brave distributed BAT tokens to its users at the time (this was in 2018). We then asked those users to give (or "mark") those tokens to their favorite content creators. Some gave them to verified creators (who were shown with a check-mark, similar to Twitter), while others gave them to unverified creators (who had no distinguishing marks, similar again to Twitter). When the creator was unverified, the BAT (which Brave gave to the user) was deposited into a settlement wallet, waiting to be claimed (similar to how PayPal lets you email money to others). Needless to say, there were may naive UI/UX components in the product and process, and the community feedback that we acted upon (quickly, within a couple days) was phenomenal. Read more at https://brave.com/rewards-update/.
I disagree with you that it's a misleading way to frame your company's actions. Even if users all knew that the creators had no relationship with Brave, the company was still accepting donations on their behalf, which is what the parent comment said.
And to be clear, I'm highly doubtful that the users were all aware that there was no relationship there. Framing the distinction as being between "verified" and "unverified" creators is disingenuous IMO: On any other platform, creators being "unverified" would mean they'd signed up, but just hadn't confirmed some details yet. The comparison of the check-marks to Twitter is also very strange, Twitter's own UI would prime users to think that a check-mark signified a notable user, not just any user who'd signed up. Whereas Brave's "unverified" users have no relationship to the company whatsoever.
Perhaps this was all just naivete on the part of Brave, but it's very concerning to me that a company which (presumably) intends to become the de-facto method of monetising content could possibly be so naive as to how their actions would be perceived.
And to be clear, I'm highly doubtful that the users were all aware that there was no relationship there. Framing the distinction as being between "verified" and "unverified" creators is disingenuous IMO: On any other platform, creators being "unverified" would mean they'd signed up, but just hadn't confirmed some details yet. The comparison of the check-marks to Twitter is also very strange, Twitter's own UI would prime users to think that a check-mark signified a notable user, not just any user who'd signed up. Whereas Brave's "unverified" users have no relationship to the company whatsoever.
Perhaps this was all just naivete on the part of Brave, but it's very concerning to me that a company which (presumably) intends to become the de-facto method of monetising content could possibly be so naive as to how their actions would be perceived.
When comparing to twitter you fail to mention two large differences:
1. You don't donate to people via twitter.
2. The people on twitter actually signed up for twitter.
If you actually think it was a mistake then perhaps stop defending it. If you don't think it was a mistake then stop explaining away to controversy by saying it was "naive UI/UX".
1. You don't donate to people via twitter.
2. The people on twitter actually signed up for twitter.
If you actually think it was a mistake then perhaps stop defending it. If you don't think it was a mistake then stop explaining away to controversy by saying it was "naive UI/UX".
I'm defending the model, but not that particular iteration of the UI/UX. People weren't donating their own money at the time either; they were effectively telling Brave who they'd like to support. Brave would then take Brave's BAT tokens (which we set aside for this purpose), and marked them for that creator (we would then engage in outreach efforts).
Didn't even realize the extent of the referral codes. Imagine if Chrome auto-inserted their own amazon affiliate links when people typed in Amazon.com - people would be up in arms.
It's traffic attribution; Brave showed the affiliate option to users via a pre-search UI panel in the browser (screenshot: https://brave.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/image3.png). Users could then decide to use the top suggested result, or not. The mistake here was matching on fully-qualified URLs, as opposed to search-input exclusively (the intended behavior). You can read more about it here: https://brave.com/referral-codes-in-suggested-sites/. No element of this is malicious.
As for what others do, traffic attribution is common. Open Firefox and perform a search from the address bar. Long before you press Enter, Firefox has already sent keystrokes off to Google.com (assuming you haven't changed your default search engine), along with a tag on the URL identifying Firefox as the source of the traffic.
As for what others do, traffic attribution is common. Open Firefox and perform a search from the address bar. Long before you press Enter, Firefox has already sent keystrokes off to Google.com (assuming you haven't changed your default search engine), along with a tag on the URL identifying Firefox as the source of the traffic.
The problem is that referral programs are intended to get people who wouldn't have signed up for a site to use it, and for binance that means getting people not already signed up to sign up and trade crypto on binance.us. This includes the referer getting up to 40% of trading fees[0]. Even for the example where a user chooses between the search 'binance' and `binance.us/?ref=`, in both cases they were already planning to visit and/or sign up for the crypto trading site, Brave didn't do any referring themselves. The profit sharing aspect makes it far-removed from the notion of just being for traffic attribution.
0: https://support.binance.us/hc/en-us/articles/360047428793-Re...
0: https://support.binance.us/hc/en-us/articles/360047428793-Re...
If you read the post covering the feature in Brave, and reviewed the screenshots of its implementation, you'd see that the intent here was to respond to user input, and offer the user the option of using Brave's referral link. The intent was never to coerce users into using the link; it was merely presented as an option—a clean and clear way to support Brave development.
It is still an example of traffic attribution, as is the case with Firefox sending your keystrokes to Google asynchronously (marked with the Firefox identifier). This is how Firefox continues to get paid, by sending users over to the Google search engine. In the case of Brave, this identifier was shown to the user prior to any network activity. That isn't the case with Firefox (and nearly every other popular browser).
It is still an example of traffic attribution, as is the case with Firefox sending your keystrokes to Google asynchronously (marked with the Firefox identifier). This is how Firefox continues to get paid, by sending users over to the Google search engine. In the case of Brave, this identifier was shown to the user prior to any network activity. That isn't the case with Firefox (and nearly every other popular browser).
If binance is fine with it then sure, but it's not like Binance is getting any extra sign-ups thanks to Brave from these suggestions, they're just giving up a percentage of their trading fees when it happens (the user would have signed up regardless of if you allowed them to use the optional referral code or not).
Fair point. Agreed :)
[deleted]
Why would people be in arms? Seems like a perfectly fine thing to do. They are literally referring people with buy intent to amazon's deep product pages.
I've since clarified my comment, I meant if Chrome inserted affiliate links, not Google (search).
For chrome doing it, the same applies to Brave as those people would have visited binance.us regardless of if Brave inserted their referral code link there.
For chrome doing it, the same applies to Brave as those people would have visited binance.us regardless of if Brave inserted their referral code link there.
It's a browser with built-in cryptocurrency nonsense. That should tell you everything you need to know.
I have a few websites and receive payments from Brave Rewards almost every month. They pay me in BAT, but since I don't care about BAT or can use it directly, it gets converted to my local currency, which I then can use to pay for stuff.
It's a mistake to assume something is nonsense or bad just because crypto is involved. Provided that you can convert it to something usable, it doesn't really matter if you're paid in dollars, BAT or something else.
It's a mistake to assume something is nonsense or bad just because crypto is involved. Provided that you can convert it to something usable, it doesn't really matter if you're paid in dollars, BAT or something else.
How much are you earning? A few dollars a month or something more substantial?
A little over 800 BAT this year: https://i.imgur.com/p7o6QKT.png
That's ~400 dollars at current BAT prices ($0.49) or ~1200 dollars at the price BAT was ~1 month ago ($1.50).
It's not a lot, BAT value isn't very stable and I'd make more money with Google Adsense, but this comes from users that block ads anyway. 400 is better than 0.
That's ~400 dollars at current BAT prices ($0.49) or ~1200 dollars at the price BAT was ~1 month ago ($1.50).
It's not a lot, BAT value isn't very stable and I'd make more money with Google Adsense, but this comes from users that block ads anyway. 400 is better than 0.
Yep. The fact that it even existed in the Brave browser at any point in time is enough to eternally dissuade me from using it.
The BAT (and before it, Bitcoin) is there as an optional feature. It's not on or enabled by default. It's there for users who wish to anonymously earn rewards for their attention, and use those rewards to support content creators on the Web.
...except those "rewards" don't ever reach the creators pockets, unless they're savvy enough to make their own ERC wallet and go through the collection process.
"If a publisher has not verified ownership, then a user’s contributions will be held in reserve inside the browser for 90 days. [...] At the end of the 90 day period, any contributions marked for unverified publishers will be released back to the wallet. No funds leave the browser except to go to verified creators."
https://brave.com/faq-rewards/#unclaimed-funds
https://brave.com/faq-rewards/#unclaimed-funds
Case in point.
Brave displays if a website is registered for the reward programm...
[This post describes the behavior of Brave Payments in last 2018. It is not an accurate description for how the system works today, in 2021].
No, creators did not have to be savvy enough to make their own ERC-20 wallet. We worked with Uphold at the time. Creators could verify with Uphold (a wallet would be created for them), and we would then send Brave's BAT (earmarked for the creator by Brave users) from our own settlement wallet over to the creator.
No, creators did not have to be savvy enough to make their own ERC-20 wallet. We worked with Uphold at the time. Creators could verify with Uphold (a wallet would be created for them), and we would then send Brave's BAT (earmarked for the creator by Brave users) from our own settlement wallet over to the creator.
That, and anytime there's a critical comment on hackernews their employee's come flying in to do damage control.
I happen to like that counterpoint. It doesn't feel like damage control, it feels like what they're doing, is worthy of discussion and they don't shy away from it.
Yes, it happens in every thread about Brave. Full-on damage control at the smallest mention, which says a lot.
Depends are which side of the table you’re sitting at.
I like Brave and many other people do. Just look at any of the other HN posts about Brave.
Since I like Brave, from this side of the table it looks like the anti-Brave people come out in full force to try to spew the same old crap and badmouth Brave. At the point it is the tired old crap, which most has been debunked already.
I like Brave and many other people do. Just look at any of the other HN posts about Brave.
Since I like Brave, from this side of the table it looks like the anti-Brave people come out in full force to try to spew the same old crap and badmouth Brave. At the point it is the tired old crap, which most has been debunked already.
With the referral program and integration with a cryptocurrency, anyone can shill for it. It's hard if not impossible to know if someone promoting Brave has a stake in BAT or not.
Those that are showing Braves many problems ("badmouth") don't have a stake one way or the other except to warn people.
Those that are showing Braves many problems ("badmouth") don't have a stake one way or the other except to warn people.
There is hardly a significant website out there with a higher concentration of Google and Microsoft employees than Hackernews, in light of which that's quite the baffling comment to make.
I'm guessing you consider Google/Microsoft a competitor to Brave. Google I might get, Microsoft I don't.
Neither consider Brave any real threat. Another commenter said "romantic view" - I think that applies here.
Neither consider Brave any real threat. Another commenter said "romantic view" - I think that applies here.
That’s a romantic view. There’s folks on HN working for direct competitors of brave. I doubt that everyone defending brave is a shill, or that everyone criticizing it does so with the purest intent as you’re suggesting.
The only real competitors for Brave are other cryptocurrencies, which yes there are many. I feel there's plenty of reasons to not like Brave and few if any are about suggesting a superior cryptocurrency.
The only non-compromised Brave users I've come across are mobile, and they are the ones that find using the Firefox add-ons menu to install uBlock origin too complicated. They are unlikely to learn the BAT system.
The only non-compromised Brave users I've come across are mobile, and they are the ones that find using the Firefox add-ons menu to install uBlock origin too complicated. They are unlikely to learn the BAT system.
I'm concerned about what happens to data Brave collects when Brave decides to sell itself. At some point they could be attractive to acquire.
Brave doesn't collect user data. We believe in Can't be Evil over Don't be Evil.
To be clear, I only mentioned 'data' generically and not 'user data' specifically. Its clear that Brave Ads collects data, even if you don't consider that data to be user data.
Correct. Data is collected. We detail that data and the privacy-preserving process by which it is collected at https://www.brave.com/p3a/. When you consider the type of data collected, it's clear why Brave is still identified as the "most private" browser among leading options: https://www.scss.tcd.ie/Doug.Leith/pubs/browser_privacy.pdf. Everything we do is designed for user-privacy and security, first and foremost. No amount of data is worth breaking your trust.
Define 'user data'.
Repeating this bumper sticker mantra is honestly consistently unhelpful and comes off smug, IMHO
I do my best to avoid sarcasm, but but but... have you looked at other players in search?
Wow, thank you for sharing. I think I’ll stick with Google for now because they’ve never done anything morally questionable.
It seems there is telemetry, sending the day, OS and browser type (among other things I cannot identify) by POST:
https://archive.is/0NTrt
It seems it can be disabled in the settings (https://search.brave.com/settings) but it's opt-out rather than opt-in.
It seems it can be disabled in the settings (https://search.brave.com/settings) but it's opt-out rather than opt-in.
This is rather annoying, hopefully it will be opt in once the beta is over.
Based on the principles in the blog post alone ( https://brave.com/brave-search-beta/ ), this will obviously be my new default search until it's proven sufficiently unusable.
DDG's usability has always been a bit of a problem for me, it feels more like a perl wrapper over some search bookmarks than an engine in its own right. Will give this one a go for a while, there is literally every reason to try and few reasons not to.
edit: holy crap Brave, c'mon, 13 CSS files and 15 JS files for the search result page? Cold cache case absolutely matters when you're trying to grow, sort it out!
DDG's usability has always been a bit of a problem for me, it feels more like a perl wrapper over some search bookmarks than an engine in its own right. Will give this one a go for a while, there is literally every reason to try and few reasons not to.
edit: holy crap Brave, c'mon, 13 CSS files and 15 JS files for the search result page? Cold cache case absolutely matters when you're trying to grow, sort it out!
I used brave search over the last week or so. It worked well for me, with less failed searches than on DDG, which sadly often does not work for me for more local queries. It did not feel unusable at all.
Note that I already liked cliqz before (properly evaluating how good a search engine is is hard, so that might have introduced bias).
Note that I already liked cliqz before (properly evaluating how good a search engine is is hard, so that might have introduced bias).
I going to try it, too, but I'm concerned that I only get 1 page of search results regardless of the search term. Weird.
People rarely venture beyond the first page of results. That being said, we've filed an issue to consider adding additional pages of results too. Thank you for the feedback!
> Fully private. No profiles.
> Brave Search doesn't track you or your queries. Ever. It's impossible for us to share, sell, or lose your data, because we don't collect it in the first place
So eh, Brave's search is actually running through Amazon CloudFront load balancers. This wasn't quite my first idea of privacy. At the very least, it means searches are likely being logged at least once, and stored using some policies set by Amazon, not Brave
Some pretty curious internal API here: https://search.brave.com/api/state/independence , found in the copious amounts of duplicate JS on the page
> Brave Search doesn't track you or your queries. Ever. It's impossible for us to share, sell, or lose your data, because we don't collect it in the first place
So eh, Brave's search is actually running through Amazon CloudFront load balancers. This wasn't quite my first idea of privacy. At the very least, it means searches are likely being logged at least once, and stored using some policies set by Amazon, not Brave
Some pretty curious internal API here: https://search.brave.com/api/state/independence , found in the copious amounts of duplicate JS on the page
That JSON endpoint for Independence metrics is what feeds the Independence Score on Brave Search. Click on the to view your own score (provided you have performed a sufficient number of searches). Current global score is 87% at the time of this writing. More information at https://search.brave.com/help/independence.
When I search for “uva”, all the first results point to university of virginia, instead or university of amsterdam, even though the latter has more students, is older and higher ranked. The former does not even contain uva in their URL while the latter is uva.nl. From a neutral, international point of view, why should this Virginia school rank higher in searches than UVA?
Situatiouns like these are what ultimately led me to switch from Duckduckgo back to google, and i test these things everytime I consider a new search. What is the use of privacy if the search results are not relevant to me?
Situatiouns like these are what ultimately led me to switch from Duckduckgo back to google, and i test these things everytime I consider a new search. What is the use of privacy if the search results are not relevant to me?
The chosen country is important. `uva` may be more commonly associated with the University of Virginia in the US. For Netherlands (same query) https://search.brave.com/search?q=uva&country=nl will correctly point to Universiteit van Amsterdam.
At present we default to country US. We're looking to implement better defaults soon.
We do hope you stick around!
At present we default to country US. We're looking to implement better defaults soon.
We do hope you stick around!
Thanks, I appreciate you taking the time to address my problem, however me having to change the country manually sounds like an additional workaround. I wish you the best luck though with your search!
The whole point of DDG is to respect privacy. That means knowing as little about its users as possible. The country select actually improves the (impression of) privacy for me.
At least they are trying to build an actual index instead of rebranding Bing like duck duck.
Bing is one of many sources from which duckduckgo derives its results; kind of like what's going on here with Brave's new search.
Not true. In practice I've found their results to be basically identical to bing and other bing front-ends. What's not from bing are the widgets like weather, or dictionary definitions etc.
So imo, "many sources, bing is just one" is misleading, as the main SERPs are pretty much straight up bing.
(Note: I've used ddg as my main search engine for years)
So imo, "many sources, bing is just one" is misleading, as the main SERPs are pretty much straight up bing.
(Note: I've used ddg as my main search engine for years)
>Not true.
https://help.duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/results/so...
>In practice I've found their results to be basically identical to bing and other bing front-ends.
This is anecdote. Countering my argument -- calling it misleading -- with anecdote doesn't work.
https://help.duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/results/so...
>In practice I've found their results to be basically identical to bing and other bing front-ends.
This is anecdote. Countering my argument -- calling it misleading -- with anecdote doesn't work.
They pretty clearly only talk about instant answers there.
When they say over 400 sources it even links to [0] a page about instant answers.
What do you expect? That I hack into ddg and give you their source? Try some searches for yourself and see that the results [1] are basically identical to bing [2] and other engines using bing[3], when compared to different indicies[4][5][6].
[0] https://duck.co/ia
[1] https://duckduckgo.com/?q=monkey
[2] https://www.bing.com/search?q=monkey
[3] https://www.qwant.com/?q=monkey
[4] https://www.google.com/search?q=monkey
[5] https://search.brave.com/search?q=monkey
[6] https://www.mojeek.com/search?q=monkey
When they say over 400 sources it even links to [0] a page about instant answers.
What do you expect? That I hack into ddg and give you their source? Try some searches for yourself and see that the results [1] are basically identical to bing [2] and other engines using bing[3], when compared to different indicies[4][5][6].
[0] https://duck.co/ia
[1] https://duckduckgo.com/?q=monkey
[2] https://www.bing.com/search?q=monkey
[3] https://www.qwant.com/?q=monkey
[4] https://www.google.com/search?q=monkey
[5] https://search.brave.com/search?q=monkey
[6] https://www.mojeek.com/search?q=monkey
> They pretty clearly only talk about instant answers there.
They talk about both, "traditional links" are not instant answers: "We also of course have more traditional links in the search results, which we also source from multiple partners, though most commonly from Bing (and none from Google)."
> Try some searches for yourself and see that the results are basically identical to bing
I disagree on your definition of "basically identical". Google and Bing results (in a private window) are more similar to me than DDG and Google:
Bing:
1. https://www.monkey.exchange
2. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=cool.monkey.an...
3. https://www.monkey.cool
4. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monkey
5. https://pt.surveymonkey.com/
(change page)
6. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=cool.monkey.an...
7. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q0hyYWKXF0Q (TONES AND I - DANCE MONKEY (OFFICIAL VIDEO))
8. https://www.britannica.com/animal/monkey
9. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monkey_(TV_series)
10. https://www.monkey.vision/
DDG:
1. https://www.monkey.cool
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monkey
3. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=cool.monkey.an...
4. https://www.britannica.com/animal/monkey
5. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/monkey
6. 2pchat.monkey.cool
7. https://www.livescience.com/27944-monkeys.html
8. https://a-z-animals.com/animals/monkey/
9. https://www.monkeyworlds.com/
10. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XTrnSJLXGBg (Mokey's Show - Is Not Christmas - YouTube)
Google (after changing to english bc they don't respect browser prefs...):
1. https://www.monkey.exchange
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monkey
(Videos links)
3. https://www.motociclismoonline.com.br/noticias/honda-monkey-... ("localized" news bc I can't get rid of it)
4. https://www.linkedin.com/company/monkeyexchange
5. https://motor1.uol.com.br/news/515705/honda-monkey-125-2022-... (also localized)
6. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=cool.monkey.an...
7. https://hbr.org/1999/11/management-time-whos-got-the-monkey
8. https://www.britannica.com/animal/monkey
9. https://www.surveymonkey.com/user/sign-up/
10. https://www.surveymonkey.com/
DDG has more "monkey" definitions than both Google and Bing, all have Wikipedia, all have cool.monkey (in different ways), Bing + Google have monkey.exchange and surveymonkey, the video's the same on Google and Bing, all of them have some unique links (such as monkey.vision and monkeyworlds.com)
Also two of the results ("Mokey's Show" youtube video and 2pchat.monkey.cool) are not on the first 10 pages of Bing's results, if at all.
(Edit: formatting and the two results)
They talk about both, "traditional links" are not instant answers: "We also of course have more traditional links in the search results, which we also source from multiple partners, though most commonly from Bing (and none from Google)."
> Try some searches for yourself and see that the results are basically identical to bing
I disagree on your definition of "basically identical". Google and Bing results (in a private window) are more similar to me than DDG and Google:
Bing:
1. https://www.monkey.exchange
2. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=cool.monkey.an...
3. https://www.monkey.cool
4. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monkey
5. https://pt.surveymonkey.com/
(change page)
6. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=cool.monkey.an...
7. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q0hyYWKXF0Q (TONES AND I - DANCE MONKEY (OFFICIAL VIDEO))
8. https://www.britannica.com/animal/monkey
9. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monkey_(TV_series)
10. https://www.monkey.vision/
DDG:
1. https://www.monkey.cool
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monkey
3. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=cool.monkey.an...
4. https://www.britannica.com/animal/monkey
5. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/monkey
6. 2pchat.monkey.cool
7. https://www.livescience.com/27944-monkeys.html
8. https://a-z-animals.com/animals/monkey/
9. https://www.monkeyworlds.com/
10. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XTrnSJLXGBg (Mokey's Show - Is Not Christmas - YouTube)
Google (after changing to english bc they don't respect browser prefs...):
1. https://www.monkey.exchange
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monkey
(Videos links)
3. https://www.motociclismoonline.com.br/noticias/honda-monkey-... ("localized" news bc I can't get rid of it)
4. https://www.linkedin.com/company/monkeyexchange
5. https://motor1.uol.com.br/news/515705/honda-monkey-125-2022-... (also localized)
6. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=cool.monkey.an...
7. https://hbr.org/1999/11/management-time-whos-got-the-monkey
8. https://www.britannica.com/animal/monkey
9. https://www.surveymonkey.com/user/sign-up/
10. https://www.surveymonkey.com/
DDG has more "monkey" definitions than both Google and Bing, all have Wikipedia, all have cool.monkey (in different ways), Bing + Google have monkey.exchange and surveymonkey, the video's the same on Google and Bing, all of them have some unique links (such as monkey.vision and monkeyworlds.com)
Also two of the results ("Mokey's Show" youtube video and 2pchat.monkey.cool) are not on the first 10 pages of Bing's results, if at all.
(Edit: formatting and the two results)
>They pretty clearly only talk about instant answers there.
You seem to be dismissing instant answers when in-fact those are exactly what the end-user expects; that's search results: Type in a query, get an answer. What am I missing here?
You seem to be dismissing instant answers when in-fact those are exactly what the end-user expects; that's search results: Type in a query, get an answer. What am I missing here?
> You seem to be dismissing instant answers when in-fact those are exactly what the end-user expects; that's search results: Type in a query, get an answer. What am I missing here?
No, I didn't, and in my first post I also said they aren't from bing:
> What's not from bing are the widgets like weather, or dictionary definitions etc
I also said that I've used ddg for years. Presumably that had a reason?
I said the main results are pretty much straight bing, and have now backed it up, about as well as you can reasonably expect me to. That's all there's to it. Please don't interpret more into what I wrote, than what I actually wrote.
No, I didn't, and in my first post I also said they aren't from bing:
> What's not from bing are the widgets like weather, or dictionary definitions etc
I also said that I've used ddg for years. Presumably that had a reason?
I said the main results are pretty much straight bing, and have now backed it up, about as well as you can reasonably expect me to. That's all there's to it. Please don't interpret more into what I wrote, than what I actually wrote.
I stated
>Bing is one of many sources from which duckduckgo derives its results
You stated
>Not true.
I then backed-up my statement with a source.
You still haven't made clear what part of my statement was not true.
>Bing is one of many sources from which duckduckgo derives its results
You stated
>Not true.
I then backed-up my statement with a source.
You still haven't made clear what part of my statement was not true.
Obviously they're saying (correctly) that the part that isn't true is the part where you said the search results aren't directly from bing. And by search results they clearly mean the list of links wherein you click on a link and go to a webpage that matches your query.
>Obviously they're saying(correctly) that the part that isn't true is the part where you said the search results aren't directly from bing.
This makes no sense. What I said is still there. I said that Bing is one source used to derive the results DDG returns.
This makes no sense. What I said is still there. I said that Bing is one source used to derive the results DDG returns.
> I said that Bing is one source used to derive the results DDG returns.
No, you said it was one of many. Implying that there are other sources that users are likely to actually encounter in practice feeding the search results page. That's what your repliers are saying is untrue.
No, you said it was one of many. Implying that there are other sources that users are likely to actually encounter in practice feeding the search results page. That's what your repliers are saying is untrue.
[deleted]
Do side by side comparisons. I haven't seen any of my searches (admittedly only the few I checked for this) differ from Bing's results in results or result positioning
It's unfortunate really as the owner guy keeps saying they use multiple sources but in all of my tests.. they're all Bing. I don't care about using Bing, I do care about being deceived (slippery slope, thin end of the wedge, etc etc)
It's unfortunate really as the owner guy keeps saying they use multiple sources but in all of my tests.. they're all Bing. I don't care about using Bing, I do care about being deceived (slippery slope, thin end of the wedge, etc etc)
Interesting, in my tests (posted at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27598329), the results differ a lot.
Maybe its more about localization, I'm curious to see the same example from someone in the US, but there are two links which do not seem to be in Bing's results at all, making me believe it has been taken from somewhere else.
Maybe its more about localization, I'm curious to see the same example from someone in the US, but there are two links which do not seem to be in Bing's results at all, making me believe it has been taken from somewhere else.
They are using Cliqz Tailcat and Bing.
I wish them luck. More competition in search is welcome. I don't think I will use it very often though because accuracy in search results trumps any concern I have with privacy online that I get from using google or bing.
But which is more accurate google or bing? Having used DDG (~bing) for a few years now, at first I felt it was inferior, but I stuck with it for the privacy. Now I feel it's roughly equal, depending on the query. Google is full of spammy SEO content, where as DDG elevates niche content (probably more because it's not targeted by SEO spam, but I'll give them the benefit of the doubt)
I feel it's somewhat impossible to discern accuracy in search results, as you can't see what's missing. But by the time you feel the results are missing something, they're likely missing ALOT.
I feel it's somewhat impossible to discern accuracy in search results, as you can't see what's missing. But by the time you feel the results are missing something, they're likely missing ALOT.
I actually wrote a userscript to allow me to easily switch from bing to google or other search engines https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/403095-altsearchrefactored
> Now I feel it's roughly equal, depending on the query
As someone who is trying to switch to DDG for the 10th time, I really wish I felt this way. My experience is so different. Right now I’m at the “g! Everything” stage. Which comes right before the “give up and just switch back to google” stage. DDG results are seriously so bad. It baffles me.
I really want to remove google completely from my life. Search and YouTube are the only two things holding me back. And neither have any competition that is even remotely close imo.
As someone who is trying to switch to DDG for the 10th time, I really wish I felt this way. My experience is so different. Right now I’m at the “g! Everything” stage. Which comes right before the “give up and just switch back to google” stage. DDG results are seriously so bad. It baffles me.
I really want to remove google completely from my life. Search and YouTube are the only two things holding me back. And neither have any competition that is even remotely close imo.
Have you tried Searx[0]? It's the privacy nuclear-option, and supposedly gets better results than DDG or Google (if not, don't shoot me: i'm just the messenger)
[0] https://searx.space
[0] https://searx.space
Any idea why this reply is downvoted? It seems there's a lot of comments that has a slight negative or doubt are downvoted in this thread. You just don't see this behaviour on any other HN thread.
part of the accuracy comes from google knowing who you are and what you typically search for.
If accuracy means creating a personal echo chamber, then I'm against this kind of accuracy
I've been working on this private search engine https://private.sh/ for a while. It encrypts your query using client-side javascript so only the Gigablast search engine can read your query. And your query is delivered to Gigablast through an anonymizing proxy that is not in Gigablast's control. So you get TOR-like privacy. Also Gigablast's privacy policy https://gigablast.com/privacy.html shows that your query is not transmitted to 3rd parties or used for anything other than to return your results. Gigablast also has 0 dependencies on Bing or Google.
Don't trust private.sh or gigablast.
Here are the reasons
Note: im not aganist anyone.
Yes, Gigablast is open source and i trust gigablast but privte.sh isn't open source. They said they will release code but from the past 1 year they didn't releas.
2nd reason is privatesh is owned by pia which is based in us. Since we all pia keeps logs about metadata it isn't secure.
Note: metadata is also important
3rd reason : There is a lot more to develop
4th reason : It has no anonymous view. It is better to add anonymous view like startpage. Startpage anonymous is more secure but i do not trust startpage because it has no source code. Maybe in future private.sh could develop.
Here are the reasons
Note: im not aganist anyone.
Yes, Gigablast is open source and i trust gigablast but privte.sh isn't open source. They said they will release code but from the past 1 year they didn't releas.
2nd reason is privatesh is owned by pia which is based in us. Since we all pia keeps logs about metadata it isn't secure.
Note: metadata is also important
3rd reason : There is a lot more to develop
4th reason : It has no anonymous view. It is better to add anonymous view like startpage. Startpage anonymous is more secure but i do not trust startpage because it has no source code. Maybe in future private.sh could develop.
Im using private.sh but what is the proof that it does'nt have any logs and it isn't open source. And please add a anonymous view like startpage and make it open source.
The encryption code is open source as it is in the javascript so you can evaluate it. It's also available in the chrome plug-in, and there's now the app in the android play store: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.privatesh.... so the private.sh web server or related anonymyzing proxy don't have access to your query since it is encrypted. on the gigablast servers will know your query, but they won't know your IP address.
Ok but please add anonymous view like startpage and i will recommend my friends use it. Hence startpage is owned by advertising company i cannot trust it anymore. I have only 2 options for myself private.sh or searx. I trust private.sh and gigablast. Thanks matt brother.
are u planning to add image search? also where is the source code?
Even if they add it we need to purchase it like gigablast. Use searx or swisscows instead.
the source code for gigablast is on github. yes, gigablast has image search but private.sh needs to start using it soon.
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Looks cool! I sort of hate the UI though. Everything is so spaced out, on my screen i literally don't see the results. I see two top results, and 3 videos _(it's not a video search..)_, and that's it. Those top results i'm not sure if they're paid or not - so it makes me feel unsure if i'm seeing any real results or not.
The page seems to waste space. I'd need a compact mode to use this search. The UI is difficult for me.
The page seems to waste space. I'd need a compact mode to use this search. The UI is difficult for me.
Strange, that there is a separate search tab for videos, but no "text only" search. Considering that 99% of video search results will be on youtube, I'd probably go straight to youtube if I needed to find a video.
Lex Fridman interviewed Brendan Eich earlier this year (a real gem of an interview, in my opinion).
I found all of it interesting, but here's a timecode link where they begin to discuss the current era of "browser wars", technical aspects and history of privacy protections, ads, search, and how that's all related.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=krB0enBeSiE&t=7652s
I found all of it interesting, but here's a timecode link where they begin to discuss the current era of "browser wars", technical aspects and history of privacy protections, ads, search, and how that's all related.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=krB0enBeSiE&t=7652s
Contrary to Brave Search's instructions to click the three dots (...) in Firefox's URL bar to add Brave Search, I don't get the dots at all.
I do get Brave Search as a button when I click the URL bar and it drops down, but if I click on the Brave Search icon to add it, Firefox says:
Invalid format Firefox could not install the search engine from: https://search.brave.com/auth/assets/opensearch.xml
I do get Brave Search as a button when I click the URL bar and it drops down, but if I click on the Brave Search icon to add it, Firefox says:
Invalid format Firefox could not install the search engine from: https://search.brave.com/auth/assets/opensearch.xml
Edit: Try now, fix is out.
We are aware of the issue. We have a fix pending.
We are aware of the issue. We have a fix pending.
Seems quite fast, good UX overall. I like that it gives me information like "all results from Brave" so that if they do fall back I know about it.
DDG has a 'bang syntax' where I can do things like '!rust' to start searching the rust docs from my url - I like that a lot, I wonder if there's anything similar here or if I could work around that somehow.
DDG has a 'bang syntax' where I can do things like '!rust' to start searching the rust docs from my url - I like that a lot, I wonder if there's anything similar here or if I could work around that somehow.
Update: We do support !rust as well (and all of DDG's other bangs).
Brave Search supports many shebangs, but I don't believe we've added support for `!rust` yet (we do have `!mdn` and `!so` though). I'll submit a request to add a `!rust` option too!
Brave Search supports many shebangs, but I don't believe we've added support for `!rust` yet (we do have `!mdn` and `!so` though). I'll submit a request to add a `!rust` option too!
"Shebangs" have been defined as '#!' for decades, I'd suggest they not be redefined.
Shebang specifically refers to using an exclamation point to define where data should be directed. Same as it is in Bash scripts, just a different context and slightly different syntax.
> In computing, a shebang is the character sequence consisting of the characters number sign and exclamation mark (#!) at the beginning of a script.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shebang_(Unix)
The word "shebang" has different uses outside of computing, but I can't find any use of the word that refers to a ! without a #
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shebang_(Unix)
The word "shebang" has different uses outside of computing, but I can't find any use of the word that refers to a ! without a #
The "she" is specifically a phonetic clipping of the "#", otherwise it's just a bang - but oh well, even jargon doesn't mean shit anymore.
DDG generally calls them "bangs": https://duckduckgo.com/bang
Here I had assumed it was a Ricky Martin reference.
You don't seem to support the !ddg, and !duckduckgo bangs. See https://search.brave.com/search?q=!ddg+test nor do you support bangs in the middle of queries such as https://search.brave.com/search?q=example+!rust+example
> Update: We do support !rust as well (and all of DDG's other bangs).
damn, alright, you got me. I'll try it out as default for a while
damn, alright, you got me. I'll try it out as default for a while
Very cool - good to know.
They already do, at least partially. Adding !g to the end of a search redirects to google.
This seems to be quick and gives decent results for what I tried! Very promising!
Going to try setting it as the default...
Going to try setting it as the default...
I search to ask if brave built their own index. Relevant results up top, then I’m getting CNN article about Fox’s right word shift, and all kinds of other completely unrelated items. Incidentally they all were interesting sounding (clickbait) and I found myself reaching these unrelated articles. It was a bit like browsing Reddit, except this is a search engine and I had a very specific yes/no question.
I believe that in the address bar you should get an icon to set the current site as a search provider when you're on it. On Firefox it's in the more menu at the right end of the bar.
It looks to me that that is currently broken due to https://search.brave.com/auth/assets/opensearch.xml redirecting to https://search.brave.com/. I haven't managed it on Firefox yet
Edit: Try now, fix is out.
we are working on pushing a fix out shortly. Stay tuned.
we are working on pushing a fix out shortly. Stay tuned.
Sorted! Thanks!
I've been using it as default for few weeks. No complaints
More privacy-oriented search is a good thing, I think.
I’d like more details on what they mean by private.
I do like that they have a metric for what’s independent vs personalized and I think that will help reduce the “I did Google it and my top result conflicts with what you told me” type frustrations, https://search.brave.com/help/independence
I’d like more details on what they mean by private.
I do like that they have a metric for what’s independent vs personalized and I think that will help reduce the “I did Google it and my top result conflicts with what you told me” type frustrations, https://search.brave.com/help/independence
I really don't understand Brave. What special thing do they offer that people actually want? The main concrete selling point seems to built-in ad blockers, but we've had that for ages in every other browser. They have some crypto stuff going on, I'll be honest, I don't understand it, because I don't care, I just want to browse the web. That should be possible without a blockchain. They claim performance is better, but at the end of the day, it's chromium, I'm skeptical that they can do much to make a huge difference. Now they're offering yet another search tool. ok. If they didn't market themselves so aggressively in tech circles I think we would have all forgotten about this.
People want a browser with an ad-blocker, and are too lazy to configure it themselves. Brave adds it and starts some "tell your friends" marketing hype. The rest writes itself.
> People want a browser with an ad-blocker, and are too lazy to configure it themselves.
It's always shocked me, but this really is the case.
I make a habit to install an adblocker (if they consent) whenever using a friend's computer, and have had many thank me for doing so a week later, saying what a huge difference it is - but none had thought it was worth the "effort" before.
?????
It's always shocked me, but this really is the case.
I make a habit to install an adblocker (if they consent) whenever using a friend's computer, and have had many thank me for doing so a week later, saying what a huge difference it is - but none had thought it was worth the "effort" before.
?????
The world of postmodern software really is confusing.
It's not just laziness. My elderly parents aren't technically inclined, and are quite stubborn to learn.
After they were phished by a malicious banner ad, I told them to install Brave since the idea of browser extensions would go over their heads.
After they were phished by a malicious banner ad, I told them to install Brave since the idea of browser extensions would go over their heads.
> What special thing do they offer that people actually want?
I tried every browser and was a long term chrome user. I tried brave and was immediately sold. I use(d) chrome/chromium (and recently used vivaldi) on 3 different plattforms. Brave is noticeable faster on every one. I use it for like 3 month now and never looked back.
Its a very pleasant experience for me.
I tried every browser and was a long term chrome user. I tried brave and was immediately sold. I use(d) chrome/chromium (and recently used vivaldi) on 3 different plattforms. Brave is noticeable faster on every one. I use it for like 3 month now and never looked back.
Its a very pleasant experience for me.
> Brave is noticeable faster on every one
This is interesting, because in my experience Ungoogled Chromium/Vivaldi feels much snappier than Brave across my computers. Especially on older devices (like my trusty X201), Brave starts to really chug when I open more than 4 or 5 tabs.
This is interesting, because in my experience Ungoogled Chromium/Vivaldi feels much snappier than Brave across my computers. Especially on older devices (like my trusty X201), Brave starts to really chug when I open more than 4 or 5 tabs.
When you notice Brave slowing down, check › More Tools › Task Manager in the browser to see which process(es) in particular are responsible. We're always happy to chat about how we can improve. Thanks!
> I just want to browse the web
Do you run an ad blocker? If so you mean you want to browse the web ad-free, as many people do. The crypto stuff you don't understand is the killer feature for Brave.
Instead of seeing ads everywhere, you can automatically contribute a small (configurable) amount to sites you spend time on, based on how much time you spend there. Come across an interesting or helpful article on someone's blog? Just click the button on your toolbar and give the owner a tip. Same thing to support a GitHub project you find particularly useful.
Do you run an ad blocker? If so you mean you want to browse the web ad-free, as many people do. The crypto stuff you don't understand is the killer feature for Brave.
Instead of seeing ads everywhere, you can automatically contribute a small (configurable) amount to sites you spend time on, based on how much time you spend there. Come across an interesting or helpful article on someone's blog? Just click the button on your toolbar and give the owner a tip. Same thing to support a GitHub project you find particularly useful.
Have you given it a try? The crypto-currency parts are optional (you have to actually enable them). Brave has got a solid adblocker and privacy features out of the box
Google's targeted advertising campaign is also optional, that doesn't make me any more comfortable with the fact that it exists.
"Targeting" means something entirely different to Brave than it does to Google. Google engages in targeted advertising by collecting your data wherever possible. Brave doesn't do anything remotely like that. Instead, in Brave, the entire Ads component is optional and off by default. If/when you opt-in, your data never leaves your device. Instead, Brave uses on-device machine-learning to determine what types of ads you might be interested in. This machine-learning evaluates a regional catalog which is routinely downloaded to your machine—the entire process happens locally, rather than in the cloud. And, if an ad is shown to you, you get 70% of the associated revenue. I covered this a bit more in a recent 5-minute talk: https://youtu.be/LsrrT502luI
> What special thing do they offer that people actually want?
Brave has iOS bookmarks sync with Windows, while preserving privacy (by not asking for an email to create an account).
Firefox and Edge require an account, Vivaldi doesn't have an iOS app, Safari requires a separate iCloud install on Windows, and Chrome is a non-starter for privacy reasons.
Brave has iOS bookmarks sync with Windows, while preserving privacy (by not asking for an email to create an account).
Firefox and Edge require an account, Vivaldi doesn't have an iOS app, Safari requires a separate iCloud install on Windows, and Chrome is a non-starter for privacy reasons.
I use brave on mobile. Because they seem to be the only stable Browser that offers bottom UI (tabs and new tab button in a bottom menu bar). I don't know how people use >6" phone screens with navigation all on top and I have hands the size of dessert plates!
"Three times faster than Chrome. Better privacy by default than Firefox. Uses 35% less battery on mobile."
If we're trusting the lies they dump onto the website, that should make Safari the fastest browser! /s
Where is the lie? Independent researchers have found Brave to exists in its own class as the "most private" browser: https://www.scss.tcd.ie/Doug.Leith/pubs/browser_privacy.pdf. Happy to discuss any concerns you may have.
That paper compares them to Chrome, Firefox, Yandex, Edge and Safari. Of course your browser phones home less than them, it would be pretty damn hard to make a browser that does beat them for violating user privacy and security.
Brave isn't competing against those browsers though. If you want to impress people who care about security, compare your browser to options like Vivaldi and Ungoogled Chromium. Otherwise, you're just bragging about having less telemetry than the foxes in the hen-house.
Brave isn't competing against those browsers though. If you want to impress people who care about security, compare your browser to options like Vivaldi and Ungoogled Chromium. Otherwise, you're just bragging about having less telemetry than the foxes in the hen-house.
It is?
I'm impressed. I've been using DDG for many years. Generally I don't need to revert back to Google; the last time I needed to was last year when looking for a particular GPX file for a walk I wanted to do called the Hebden 22.
The search query was 'hebden 22 gpx'. There are many pages out there with broken links, and I probably went through the top 20 or so on DDG with no success. When I tried Google, the 4th result returned a page with the GPX once you've registered for a free account.
That page appears at number one on Brave search!
The search query was 'hebden 22 gpx'. There are many pages out there with broken links, and I probably went through the top 20 or so on DDG with no success. When I tried Google, the 4th result returned a page with the GPX once you've registered for a free account.
That page appears at number one on Brave search!
Also interesting search for 'jan 6' and compare. It seems Brave and Google return similar results which differ from Bing and Duckduckgo, which resemble each other.
How does Brave plan to handle relations with law enforcement and their requests? Will Brave offer a mechanism to uniquely identify the most offensive users?
Not sure what you're referring to here; Brave doesn't have any user data. We don't collect it to begin with. We believe in Can't be Evil over Don't be Evil.
Yet, you have no way to prove it - or is this product completely open source?
Additionally, I believe OP was referring to requests for removal of search results that contain personal information. Both Google and Bing support these and will remove results in accordance with GDPR.
Additionally, I believe OP was referring to requests for removal of search results that contain personal information. Both Google and Bing support these and will remove results in accordance with GDPR.
I'm really just asking for those who search up "criminal" content, as I remember Google being asked to give up the IP addresses of those who searched under a term in a specific region at a specific time -- but that still meant thousands of addresses.
But I think your case is also worth adding to the conversation, although I don't believe removing results collides with privacy.
But I think your case is also worth adding to the conversation, although I don't believe removing results collides with privacy.
Yeah yeah.
Let me put it this way: if it's an opensource search engine you'll have me for sure.
If it's not 100% opensource then I can't be sure you don't track me and we end up in the google cage again.
Let me put it this way: if it's an opensource search engine you'll have me for sure.
If it's not 100% opensource then I can't be sure you don't track me and we end up in the google cage again.
If you return a result that came from Bing and law enforcement want it gone (because it is illegal for whatever reason) do Brave remove it from the results or do Bing? Both have problems but I'd like to know which route Brave take.
A likely monetization by Brave will be prioritizing search results for verified content creators within the BAT token ecosystem (a la Twitter check-mark).
Brave browser on android doesn't let me set it as default search yet. Maybe I need an update.
Same here. Latest version. Kinda ironic.
We'll have this fixed soon; apologies for the inconvenience.
Loving Brave search so far, but I am wondering if there is a way to manually add sites to the index? Adding them to the Google index and hoping for Brave to pick them up doesn't seem like a clean solution.
Brave can't get the site from Google index (well they can but that would get them sued out of existence). You add to Bing to get a site on DDG and Brave search.
Why does this footer hide after the first page view?
> Brave Search uses private usage metrics to estimate overall activity and performance. You can turn off this option in Settings.
> Brave Search uses private usage metrics to estimate overall activity and performance. You can turn off this option in Settings.
Keeping the UI clean. A section and toggle exists for the feature immediately within the https://search.brave.com/settings page too.
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=gdp+of+brazil&t=h_&ia=web
https://search.brave.com/search?q=gdp+of+brazil
One thing I am frustrated with DDG is its lack of summary card for some entries. I think Brave search better in this case.
https://search.brave.com/search?q=gdp+of+brazil
One thing I am frustrated with DDG is its lack of summary card for some entries. I think Brave search better in this case.
I'm really impressed by how finished this beta feels. Well done!
The only thing stopping me from trying this out as my default search engine is my new-found reliance on the 'bang operators' on DuckDuckGo. Being able to type: !subreddit or !maps or whatever right in my address bar has become so convenient I feel I'm probably locked in for now. Maybe if something similar appears in future versions I might switch.
The only thing stopping me from trying this out as my default search engine is my new-found reliance on the 'bang operators' on DuckDuckGo. Being able to type: !subreddit or !maps or whatever right in my address bar has become so convenient I feel I'm probably locked in for now. Maybe if something similar appears in future versions I might switch.
Hey, have you tried bangs on Brave Search? Lots of them should already work out of the box, if not, please let us know!
Oh wow, I had tried `!reddit` and didn't get redirected so assumed none of them worked. Just tried `!subreddit` though and that one works. Will definitely give this a try as default engine now. Cheers.
About a year ago I tried a few different web browsers (chrome, safari, firefox, and brave) to see which had the best user experience and which one I thought had the most value to add to me as a user. I settled on Brave because;
1. I don't have to install a adblocker or any third party extensions out of the gate. - Third party ones never seem to do the job on the other browsers.
2. Their form of rewarding creators is superior, in my opinion, to having creators appeal to a ad serving service for support. - I also find the rewards from viewing ads amusing and have even clicked on a few of the ads.
3. They seem to be the most engaged project with technology trends right now...
I will also mention that their bookmark system works for me. The one feature I find to be missing is having the bookmark icons stay centered in the bar as they can in safari.
It's not too hard for me to imagine that in ten years 90% of users will be using Brave and we will be here again talking about another new web browser on the scene shaking things up from the Brave status quo (instead of how we are with google).
1. I don't have to install a adblocker or any third party extensions out of the gate. - Third party ones never seem to do the job on the other browsers.
2. Their form of rewarding creators is superior, in my opinion, to having creators appeal to a ad serving service for support. - I also find the rewards from viewing ads amusing and have even clicked on a few of the ads.
3. They seem to be the most engaged project with technology trends right now...
I will also mention that their bookmark system works for me. The one feature I find to be missing is having the bookmark icons stay centered in the bar as they can in safari.
It's not too hard for me to imagine that in ten years 90% of users will be using Brave and we will be here again talking about another new web browser on the scene shaking things up from the Brave status quo (instead of how we are with google).
It would be very difficult for Brave to become the "browser status quo" without advertisers finding new ways to enforce dark patterns or otherwise abusive systems.
Advertising is a bigger business than selling browsers.
Advertising is a bigger business than selling browsers.
Thank you for the kind words and support! Please do let us know if there is ever anything we can do for you.
I've been using this for a day, and it's been surprisingly good. My only concern, is the grip of the Google ecosystem always seems to lure me back in.
I feel, for this Brave to truly win, they need to consider Auth, workplace tooling, and email. Attempt to match Google toe-to-toe and fight them as a platform/ecosystem, rather than a search engine.
Easier said that done, of course.
I feel, for this Brave to truly win, they need to consider Auth, workplace tooling, and email. Attempt to match Google toe-to-toe and fight them as a platform/ecosystem, rather than a search engine.
Easier said that done, of course.
I'd really like to be able to customise (explicitly not based on my "behaviour"), how I want my search results ranked. I don't really care how you do it, let me upvote/downvote results, or let me build rules, but consider the default results just a starting point and then overlay the users preferred index
We are actually planning to implement just that! You can read more about our proposal here: https://brave.com/goggles/
damn, I can't believe how quickly you wrote that after my comment! :D
My dream for a search engine is to be able to exclude the entire ad+seo web from my results by filtering out any results that have 3rd part ad javascript. Then we could actually find the non-commercial web again and hopefully help it grow.
This search engine is just trying to copy google's with a few tweaks in the result, not that interesting.
This search engine is just trying to copy google's with a few tweaks in the result, not that interesting.
This is one to look out for, I've been using this for about a week, and the search results have been really good, empirically they feel a bit better than DuckDuckGo.
If this stays this good over time and ends up having the same acceptable amount of text ads as DDG in order to be sustainable I might switch to it for good.
I think the thing that excites me the most about this, is the non-personalized search results.
Ironically, I end up using DDG for more accuracy, because a lot of the time on Google I am unable to get to articles or information I'm looking for, no matter how I search.
I think this is a result of personalized search results - i.e. Google "guessing" based on ML models what my interests are. Many times I don't want this, I just want to see pages that use the more classic PageRank algorithm.
Honestly, sometimes when I search it feels like Google is "preaching" to me in a way - rather than showing me what I search for, it shows me what it thinks I ought to be viewing. I don't get this from DDG, it feels like the results there are a lot more objective?
Ironically, I end up using DDG for more accuracy, because a lot of the time on Google I am unable to get to articles or information I'm looking for, no matter how I search.
I think this is a result of personalized search results - i.e. Google "guessing" based on ML models what my interests are. Many times I don't want this, I just want to see pages that use the more classic PageRank algorithm.
Honestly, sometimes when I search it feels like Google is "preaching" to me in a way - rather than showing me what I search for, it shows me what it thinks I ought to be viewing. I don't get this from DDG, it feels like the results there are a lot more objective?
Oh wow! Goood news!
I normally use Chrome and Google search for work and Firefox and DDG for personal things. Then, Brave for personal browsing that requires a vpn or Chromium support. Some websites are just optimised for Chrome, Brave always come in handy in that case.
I normally use Chrome and Google search for work and Firefox and DDG for personal things. Then, Brave for personal browsing that requires a vpn or Chromium support. Some websites are just optimised for Chrome, Brave always come in handy in that case.
Well. When I google myself, I find one page entirely of me, engineer from East Europe. When I Brave-search myself, I find my namesake from Ohio that died in 1919.
But, I learned something new about Cleveland Ohio in early 20th century, so I guess it's not that bad.
But, I learned something new about Cleveland Ohio in early 20th century, so I guess it's not that bad.
Another way of looking at it: Hey, Brave really doing its bit for user privacy! ;-)
DDG search is fine for me, the thing I think Google still does better is all the searches like "what's the weather in X", "3.5 miles to km", "what's the next NBA game" etc
I found that Google still does these things much better.
I found that Google still does these things much better.
Google has taught people to ask full questions (without question marks strangely), and knows how to treat those requests (Who is the mayor of Palo Alto; What's the weather in X"...). DDG is a little worse at that.
I expect search engines to search for every words in my request, and I prefer shorter requests. DDG gives pertinent instant answers for "weather Paris", "3.5mi in km" and correct results for NBA schedule.
I expect search engines to search for every words in my request, and I prefer shorter requests. DDG gives pertinent instant answers for "weather Paris", "3.5mi in km" and correct results for NBA schedule.
2 minor comments:
1 on mobile it is very convenient to have an x in the search box in order to clear that text from the previous search
2 when correcting spelling it would be nice if it bolded the word that was misspelled rather then the entire search phrase
1 on mobile it is very convenient to have an x in the search box in order to clear that text from the previous search
2 when correcting spelling it would be nice if it bolded the word that was misspelled rather then the entire search phrase
it failed my first test of returning stackoverflow for a code error
https://search.brave.com/search?q=null+pointer+exception
https://search.brave.com/search?q=null+pointer+exception
Not sure if they updated it recently, but it pulls up all SO instant answer for me.
I really like that they are pulling SO answers into their results: https://search.brave.com/search?q=strpos+php
Yes, if they asked for permission (and pay if asked). Otherwise it is the same as what Google was sued over. I wonder if they did ask first.
SO is CC BY-SA https://stackoverflow.com/help/licensing
Is there a way to make this the default browser on iOS? I can see how to make it the default for searching in Brave but not system-wide. This matters for Siri-initiated searches.
Off topic, a link description from my first search page renders a bit different.
``` Jan 12, 2021 - var ytplayer = ytplayer || ...tps:\/\/s.youtube.com\/api\/stats\/atr?docid=7EqnoEljHCw\&ei=aL-MX5nwOfjOzLUPxLWJiAw\&len=206\&ns=yt\&plid=AAWx-WOvfFqbWF59\&ver=2\",\"elapsedMediaTimeSeconds\":5}},\"videoDetails\":{\"videoId\":\"7EqnoEljHCw\",\"title\":\"** ... ```
``` Jan 12, 2021 - var ytplayer = ytplayer || ...tps:\/\/s.youtube.com\/api\/stats\/atr?docid=7EqnoEljHCw\&ei=aL-MX5nwOfjOzLUPxLWJiAw\&len=206\&ns=yt\&plid=AAWx-WOvfFqbWF59\&ver=2\",\"elapsedMediaTimeSeconds\":5}},\"videoDetails\":{\"videoId\":\"7EqnoEljHCw\",\"title\":\"** ... ```
I don't quite remember, but wasn't the cliqz search engine ranking function somehow built on tracking users, kind of contrary to what brave stands for?
[deleted]
I think they copied DuckDuckGo's bangs.
It's nowhere in the documentation, and the UI never indicates it, but bang searches (like `!stackoverflow parse html with regex`) work in Brave Search exactly as they do in DuckDuckGo.
Preliminary testing of mine suggests that they just copied DuckDuckGo's list directly–I tried a few obscure ones from DDG, like `!ldss` or `!uib`, and they work in Brave Search.
@w0ts0n any details you are willing to share?
It's nowhere in the documentation, and the UI never indicates it, but bang searches (like `!stackoverflow parse html with regex`) work in Brave Search exactly as they do in DuckDuckGo.
Preliminary testing of mine suggests that they just copied DuckDuckGo's list directly–I tried a few obscure ones from DDG, like `!ldss` or `!uib`, and they work in Brave Search.
@w0ts0n any details you are willing to share?
We support many shebangs, with more to come in the future. For now, this is what is offered:
!i - Search Images
!n - Search News
!a - Amazon
!b - Bing
!d - DuckDuckGo
!e - eBay
!g - Google
!p - Pinterest
!r - Reddit
!s - StartPage
!w - Wikipedia
!li - LinkedIn
!gh - GitHub
!gm - Google Maps
!so - Stack Overflow
!tw - Twitter
!yt - YouTube
!wa - Wolfram Alpha
!mj - Mojeek
!osm - Open Street Map
!mdn - Mozilla Developer Network
!i - Search Images
!n - Search News
!a - Amazon
!b - Bing
!d - DuckDuckGo
!e - eBay
!g - Google
!p - Pinterest
!r - Reddit
!s - StartPage
!w - Wikipedia
!li - LinkedIn
!gh - GitHub
!gm - Google Maps
!so - Stack Overflow
!tw - Twitter
!yt - YouTube
!wa - Wolfram Alpha
!mj - Mojeek
!osm - Open Street Map
!mdn - Mozilla Developer Network
If that's all that's offered, why does DDG's obscure shebangs work on Brave Search?
https://search.brave.com/search?q=!hn+brave+search
https://search.brave.com/search?q=!hn+brave+search
Oh, apologies for the confusion. We support DDG's shebangs too; the above list is what we add to the list.
!g is called a bang.
A shebang is something else ('#!').
A shebang is something else ('#!').
Out of that list, the only two bangs that DuckDuckGo doesn’t support are:
- !d (it’s already DuckDuckGo, so !d is “dictionary”)
- !mj (it’s !mojeek)
- !d (it’s already DuckDuckGo, so !d is “dictionary”)
- !mj (it’s !mojeek)
No worries. Congrats on the launch.
Are the !a and !e bangs for Amazon and eBay defaulting to .com and if yes, is there a way to get them to default to e.g. amazon.de?
!g is called a bang. A shebang is '#!'.
Exciting news! Hopefully thats the first no tracking search engine that meets my requirements.
It seems as Brave Search could be the first non-tracking search engine that combines satisfying search results with good presentation.
I was never completly happy with DuckDuckGo, probably they use(despite others) search results of Bing. DuckDuck together with Startpage(google results but bad presentation) works for me but is unconvinient.
It seems as Brave Search could be the first non-tracking search engine that combines satisfying search results with good presentation.
I was never completly happy with DuckDuckGo, probably they use(despite others) search results of Bing. DuckDuck together with Startpage(google results but bad presentation) works for me but is unconvinient.
What is the roadmap for localisation? I tried some queries that should give localised results, but they yield terrible results (just like DDG does).
I tired some programmers searches and some that has caused controversy in other search engines (like "easiest way to suicide") and I'm sorry to say I get 100% the same results as I do from Bing. At most there are widgets (like DDG) and maybe swapped a place or two in the top 5 results as a difference. I can't see any indication of their own indexing at all.
Definitely worth giving it a try for a week or two. I already noticed that they put stackoverflow snippets right in the results which is fab
My two cents on paid search engines: yes so much awareness around privacy these days. so there might be a potential shift in user behavior, which opens up a big market. however, i am skeptical because people are used to free search engine that surfaces good results.
so privacy is great value prop. but not so much that i am willing to pay for it while living with worse search quality.
so privacy is great value prop. but not so much that i am willing to pay for it while living with worse search quality.
There is a self-hosted Google search (which just strips some tracking but ultimately sends the query to Google nonetheless).
- https://github.com/benbusby/whoogle-search
I would be curious if what HN thinks of it. I have experimented with it and it works fine from a user perspective.
- https://github.com/benbusby/whoogle-search
I would be curious if what HN thinks of it. I have experimented with it and it works fine from a user perspective.
Looks good
Few problems here:
https://search.brave.com/search?q=who+is+the+mayor+of+palo+a...
- Mayor is Tom DuBois. Name does not appear anywhere in results.
- Seems that Brave should not be relying on Wikidata as the highlighted result is wrong
- The wiki "box" on the side also looks a bit broken
https://search.brave.com/search?q=who+is+the+mayor+of+palo+a...
- Mayor is Tom DuBois. Name does not appear anywhere in results.
- Seems that Brave should not be relying on Wikidata as the highlighted result is wrong
- The wiki "box" on the side also looks a bit broken
Thanks! We'll have a look at this one. This is definitely broken.
community-curated open ranking models
https://brave.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/goggles.pdf
Wonderful stuff, best hill to die on.
Wonderful stuff, best hill to die on.
This is just bing reranked with occasional results thrown in perhaps from their own index. Just look at the query completion suggestions, they are identical to Bing. If they had their own index they'd have a link to the cached copy.
Ooh interesting. Ever since runaroo gave up the go, I've needed something new.
Not sure if it's the hug of death, but this search generates a 500: https://search.brave.com/search?q=Spring+Boot
There's only 1 page of search results, regardless of the search term. Why?
Not to be nitpicking, but we actually show up to 20 results (not counting infobox, videos, news, places, instance answer, etc.) in a single page, which would correspond to 2 pages of other search engines (they usually show up to 10 results per page).
The idea is that most people will never go beyond first or (very rarely) second page. And as said in another comment, if you did not find what you were looking for in the top 20 results, changes are you will not find it in following results.
We do have plans for a feature which would allow community-based alterations of our core ranking algorithm which might help here. You can read about it here: https://brave.com/goggles/
Disclaimer: I work on Brave Search.
The idea is that most people will never go beyond first or (very rarely) second page. And as said in another comment, if you did not find what you were looking for in the top 20 results, changes are you will not find it in following results.
We do have plans for a feature which would allow community-based alterations of our core ranking algorithm which might help here. You can read about it here: https://brave.com/goggles/
Disclaimer: I work on Brave Search.
this is to do with the philosophy of Cliqz (who developed what's now Brave Search) - if you can't find the results on the first page, you'll probably be better off changing the search term than paginating. I have no idea how reasonable that is though.
Search the word “porn”. 20 results? The results I want might be on the 2nd page or further.
I’m willing to concede maybe I’m an outlier in behavior but I definitely want more than 20 results perhaps 33% of my searches.
I wonder if cliqz did any studies on this before deciding on 20 fixed results.
It also conveniently allows them to avoid the issue of paging search results.
I’m willing to concede maybe I’m an outlier in behavior but I definitely want more than 20 results perhaps 33% of my searches.
I wonder if cliqz did any studies on this before deciding on 20 fixed results.
It also conveniently allows them to avoid the issue of paging search results.
In really hope this improves. I firmly believe the web needs an independent index besides Google and MS. But the first two searches I made sadly returned subpar results. So I'll keep my fingers crossed.
Very curious on how this is going to work, especially advertisement-wise
I imagine they will utilize the Basic Attention Token for search ads, in a similar fashion to the rest of their advertising.
From the page:
---
> Will I see Brave ads in Brave Search beta? What about Brave Rewards?
> We’re currently thinking through different search experiences to offer our users. Some want a premium, ad-free search experience. Others want a free, ad-supported model. We think choice is best. Brave Ads with rewards is definitely possible, once we’re ready to take on the challenge of privacy-protected search ads.
---
From the page:
---
> Will I see Brave ads in Brave Search beta? What about Brave Rewards?
> We’re currently thinking through different search experiences to offer our users. Some want a premium, ad-free search experience. Others want a free, ad-supported model. We think choice is best. Brave Ads with rewards is definitely possible, once we’re ready to take on the challenge of privacy-protected search ads.
---
Right, their current browser ads seem to promise privacy by doing some floc-like thing on-device and preloading a bunch of ads to potentially show so the server doesn't know which ones were shown.
Doing that for a website seems a bit different, but I don't see an issue with the DDG model of doing some very basic targeting based only on the current search term.
I'd be really shocked if it didn't tie to BAT in the Brave Browser, but I am definitely curious what they'll do for people who use it with other browsers.
They say it's their own index. That's amazing if true (I wouldn't put it past them to lie). It's super fast and the results (formatting, snippets, etc) look a lot like Google.
What reason would we have to lie? Thank you for the kind words and support otherwise Please do let us know if there is ever anything we can do for you.
Just like their Ads -> BAT
If they add bang operators, I might trial switching over from ddg.
We have them today
Very impressed. Results seem already better than duckduckgo.
Why should I switch to this from DuckDuckGo? What is the value proposition here that's somehow greater than it's alternatives (DDG, Searx, etc.)?
DDG is a great search engine, and we are very thankful for the movements they've brought about in the private search space. That said, Brave is developing its own, distinct index. A recent example of what this means is from the "Tank Man" results on Bing recently. When Bing returned no results, DDG also returned no results. Brave Search, on the other hand, continued serving up results. As was stated elsewhere, "we aren't beholden to anybody."
So when Brave use Bing as a third-party and Bing censors a result like tank man, how do you make sure it doesn't change anything at Brave? How does Brave ensure that what is pulled in from a third-party is 100% censorship free?
For example a search of "brave bat controversy" gives me the exact same top results on Brave search and Bing search. Are you saying this is not pulled from Bing?
For example a search of "brave bat controversy" gives me the exact same top results on Brave search and Bing search. Are you saying this is not pulled from Bing?
This is Cliqz's Tailcat search engine. Hubert Burda Media sold it to Brave earlier this year and got some shares for it in return.
I just hope that they really don't collect data or profile users, as there could exist the concern that it would get shared with Hubert Burda Media. Or if Hubert Burda Media sees this as a way to shape the search experience in favor of publishers, once it has gained a big enough user base.
https://brave.com/brave-search/
I just hope that they really don't collect data or profile users, as there could exist the concern that it would get shared with Hubert Burda Media. Or if Hubert Burda Media sees this as a way to shape the search experience in favor of publishers, once it has gained a big enough user base.
https://brave.com/brave-search/
I still prefer Iridium with its Quant search engine.
Qwant really has been a lovely search engine, highly suggest it for anyone looking for something better than DDG.
I'm ready for the downvotes, but Brave ruined its trust relationship with me ages ago. I don't think I'll be using this.
[deleted]
Is this actually more private then just opening your chrome/Firefox/etc in incognito mode and using Google?
How have they gotten there search results?
"Even supposedly “neutral” or “private” search engines rely on big tech for results. Brave is different. We deliver results based on our own built-from-scratch index. We’re beholden to no one."
Why is this?
I get that it's not easy to build a good search engine, but on the surface it doesn't seem to be that hard a technical problem to solve either. Is it simply that the R&D required to build something competitive is too high for most companies?
I get that it's not easy to build a good search engine, but on the surface it doesn't seem to be that hard a technical problem to solve either. Is it simply that the R&D required to build something competitive is too high for most companies?
There are tons of hurdles. For example, many major websites will block you if you are not a crawler owned by a few companies. They have to be in Google’s index to survive, but that doesn’t mean they allow everyone else to copy their content.
I guess you can get 90% of the way, but the remaining 10% becomes really hard unless you're Google scale. But even several 90% alternatives would be better than absolute monopoly.
I think it is definitely a hard problem to solve on a large scale to address latency, quality and size of the index they plan to address. It definitely isn't as easy as spinning up an elastic search cluster.
I agree that getting something "mostly" good or a domain specific search engine isn't as hard with the newest advances in this space with vector similarity indices.
I agree that getting something "mostly" good or a domain specific search engine isn't as hard with the newest advances in this space with vector similarity indices.
Do not forget that Brave (the browser) was designed/marketed as part of the US Culture Wars, basically as a Firefox-but-for-Conservatives.
Brave (the search engine) apparently follows the same strategy. The reason for having this index is basically political. Brave doesn't want to be impacted by Google or Bing's editorial choices. Of course, Brave Search will certainly be doing its own editorial choices.
Brave (the search engine) apparently follows the same strategy. The reason for having this index is basically political. Brave doesn't want to be impacted by Google or Bing's editorial choices. Of course, Brave Search will certainly be doing its own editorial choices.
Brave is just a browser. It exists to empower the user, regardless of their personal politics. On "editorial choices," we've proposed Goggles, which you can read more about at https://brave.com/goggles.
While they don't seem to want to mention the name this is Cliqz.com mixed with Bing.com
If Brave is just another ad company (quote in their blog post) how is this different than Google?
AFAICT, Brave has been pushing "privacy-respecting ads", which likely are less profitable and less effective than targeted ads.
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oh, wow! Not bad at all considering they are building their own index. I like their results better than DDG.
Between Brave and Vivaldi, I think moving out of the Google world for common folks is a possibility now.
Between Brave and Vivaldi, I think moving out of the Google world for common folks is a possibility now.
this Brave logo is so close to ING Direct Bank's (look at their ios app), it's ridiculous. Once they discover you I reckon they'll get legal action to change it.
Is there any way to make this the default in Safari?
Not that they’re required to do so and more choice can be good, but why didn’t they work with DDG? I see they’ve gone ahead and stolen the bangs (!w) feature for themselves.
Did DDG have a trademark ovet bangs? That's just a feature that users expect. Other small search engine frontends have those too.
DDG just uses Bing results. This solution is completely independent.
You may ask why that's needed, just recently DDG was censoring the "tank man" photo on the anniversary of Tiananmen Square because Bing was censoring it.
This new indexer is very much welcome and I hope it stays free of censorship from the CCP, marxists, and others.
You may ask why that's needed, just recently DDG was censoring the "tank man" photo on the anniversary of Tiananmen Square because Bing was censoring it.
This new indexer is very much welcome and I hope it stays free of censorship from the CCP, marxists, and others.
Yes that much is clear, but DDG has a privacy bent to their engine too. It just seems like working with DDG to remove that fault would be beneficial to both parties.
If I recall, DDG chose to use Bing to remove Google from the equation but also prevent the need to reinvent the wheel.
Brave for all their technological progress and talk about improving the web, often seem to promote only themselves with their advancements. They aren’t required to share anything however. The parroting of bangs is just a bit hostile is all.
If I recall, DDG chose to use Bing to remove Google from the equation but also prevent the need to reinvent the wheel.
Brave for all their technological progress and talk about improving the web, often seem to promote only themselves with their advancements. They aren’t required to share anything however. The parroting of bangs is just a bit hostile is all.
Bing and thus DDG's index really isn't that good.
Is Microsoft an underdog now? Why do you consider them any better than Google, especially after the "tank man" fiasco?
I don't see why it's a bad thing to make your own thing or to only promote your own company.
Brave isn't reinventing the wheel either, they purchased & revived Tailcats from Cliqz (https://0x65.dev/)
The bang operators are a small feature that are easy to implement, nothing special. Taking inspiration and features from competitors is nothing new.
Even in this thread there was a user asking for them, saying they'd switch over if Brave implements them (they already have them obviously)
I don't even think DDG came up with them first...
Is Microsoft an underdog now? Why do you consider them any better than Google, especially after the "tank man" fiasco?
I don't see why it's a bad thing to make your own thing or to only promote your own company.
Brave isn't reinventing the wheel either, they purchased & revived Tailcats from Cliqz (https://0x65.dev/)
The bang operators are a small feature that are easy to implement, nothing special. Taking inspiration and features from competitors is nothing new.
Even in this thread there was a user asking for them, saying they'd switch over if Brave implements them (they already have them obviously)
I don't even think DDG came up with them first...
>This solution is completely independent.
It is not. It is Cliqz tailcat plus Bing. Censorship from Bing will end up at brave too.
It is not. It is Cliqz tailcat plus Bing. Censorship from Bing will end up at brave too.
"Cliqz tailcat" is an independent index and we rely on third-parties like Bing for a small portion of requests where we are not confident enough (although we would be able to serve 99% of the requests, users expect the best quality). For the long answer you can read here: https://search-dev.brave.com/help/independence
I’m stoked on this.
Brave search may truly bring some new blood to the browser/search wars.
This is what we desperately need as google gets less and less useful.
It is yet another indexer or yandex :)
"Why not Shown HN" :P
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interesting paper by Brave search team:
"GOGGLES: Democracy dies in darkness, and so does the Web" https://brave.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/goggles.pdf
"GOGGLES: Democracy dies in darkness, and so does the Web" https://brave.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/goggles.pdf
Shorter URL for anybody wanting to share: https://brave.com/goggles/
azinman2(4)
I’ve been using it. Seems like a solid search engine. Interestingly, Google appeared to be censoring results yesterday to hide reports about an unfortunate shooting at a Juneteenth event in Oakland and a subsequent situation where a crowd of people were blocking an ambulance from exiting the area of the shooting with wounded victims. Let’s just say the story didn’t play well to Google’s political base… so they hid it. Brave search provided unfiltered/uncensored results.
Do events show up on Google search that quickly, and in turn, get censored that quickly?
I saw the video of what you are referring to on Twitter. Just searched on Google, "alameda twerking", and the first four results I see are for this incident.
I saw the video of what you are referring to on Twitter. Just searched on Google, "alameda twerking", and the first four results I see are for this incident.
I'm wondering how this censoring process you envision actually played out at Google. Like did an executive tell an underling to hide this information from the world? I'm genuinely curious.
I’m also curious what Google’s “political base” is, since they’re apparently getting final say on the search results. I keep getting Pinterest on my image searches and maybe the political base can help.
Do you believe that Google doesn't engage in censoring search results? Do you know that YouTube was taking down the video of said incident yesterday and continues to do so today? https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2021/02/09/google-quietly-esc...
Hiding a news story like this specific example? No, I do not believe Google did that. Not for a second. That is absurd.
How they handle possible spammers, people posting dangerous medical advice, etc is a bit different, no? I'm not letting them off the hook entirely, but this example is simply ridiculous. What benefit would they get from it, and at what risk? (i.e. disgruntled employee blows the whistle on their behavior)
And really, Breitbart? Omg.
How they handle possible spammers, people posting dangerous medical advice, etc is a bit different, no? I'm not letting them off the hook entirely, but this example is simply ridiculous. What benefit would they get from it, and at what risk? (i.e. disgruntled employee blows the whistle on their behavior)
And really, Breitbart? Omg.
Do you have other sources than breitbart?
They all know Google search employs censorship, they just rather lie to your face.
I almost forgot about the blacklist! https://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2016-06-22/google-is...
I almost forgot about the blacklist! https://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2016-06-22/google-is...
I can find that story on google just fine. Please take your right-wing conspiracies back to 4chan bud.
[deleted]
Why do they use > instead of /?
It's Horrible.
They also do not indicate when the result is a .pdf or a document.
The best feature that google killed was advanced filtering. If instead of privacy brave gave me that, I'll sell my soul in a heartbeat!
It's Horrible.
They also do not indicate when the result is a .pdf or a document.
The best feature that google killed was advanced filtering. If instead of privacy brave gave me that, I'll sell my soul in a heartbeat!
I really cannot understand why people go through the effort of building manual light/dark mode toggles in websites these days. I already set it system-wide. Just default to what I already specified. I see it all over the place and it boggles my mind when the user's preference is just a media query away.
I haven't implemented a client-side setting on my sites yet, but it's in the plans. I can tell you why I plan to do it, and also why I test with no-JS support and in text-mode browsers, implement status indicators and back-to-top buttons, and why I consider Netscape 2.0 a first-class citizen on my domains.
Sure, the user-agent "should" provide all of that stuff, but the reality is that most don't have all the features I would want as a visitor to my site, so I have to bend over backwards to accommodate their specific abilities.
The user-experience is a combination of three abilities: the ability of the user, the ability of the user-agent, and the ability of the Web site. Combined together they form the ACCESS-ABILITY landscape.
Sure, the user-agent "should" provide all of that stuff, but the reality is that most don't have all the features I would want as a visitor to my site, so I have to bend over backwards to accommodate their specific abilities.
The user-experience is a combination of three abilities: the ability of the user, the ability of the user-agent, and the ability of the Web site. Combined together they form the ACCESS-ABILITY landscape.
Just saw this. For things that the UA doesn’t provide, I see your point and agree. However, in this specific case, the user agent DOES provide the user preference for light vs dark mode. Why reimplement it?
It's good for Google to have competition but they, or someone else, could just buy Brave and mangle or kill it.
Turning web search into a protocol is what is needed. Maybe Brave could do this by sharing their index and creating a standard system for sharing indexes, spam blocklists, and whatever else is needed to operate an open web index that competes with Google.
Turning web search into a protocol is what is needed. Maybe Brave could do this by sharing their index and creating a standard system for sharing indexes, spam blocklists, and whatever else is needed to operate an open web index that competes with Google.
compare search results for "lab leak"
https://search.brave.com/search?q=lab+leak
https://www.google.com/search?q=lab+leak
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=lab+leak
https://www.bing.com/search?q=lab+leak
https://search.brave.com/search?q=lab+leak
https://www.google.com/search?q=lab+leak
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=lab+leak
https://www.bing.com/search?q=lab+leak
What am I supposed to see? All engines give the same or very similar results for me
At least for me I saw that the search results for google were similar to brave while those for duckduckgo were similar to those from bing.
[deleted]
The detractor below apparently fails to understand that searching for controversial topics is a great way to see which search engines are similar, or relying on the results from other engines.
This is a great idea. I also tested this out with "Alex Jones", some engines show articles criticizing him above his own website.
Probably some conspiracy nonsense.
I'm not sure why you think it's relevant to make such a remark without a shred of evidence regarding my thoughts.
I left it for the readers to form their own opinion. Something you apparently are loath to do.
I left it for the readers to form their own opinion. Something you apparently are loath to do.
Yes, I say what I mean. I don't hide behind the "I'm just asking questions" facade.
S/he literally didn't ask any questions though. Sounds like you have a lot of baggage and you're throwing it around here.
How do they fare on the 'tank man' test?
nearly identical, iirc that was not the case on june 4th
If things go as planned, this may become a paid, ad-free, zero-tracking search engine. I can't express how exciting this is to me.
Over the past few years, I have made several attempts to replace Google Search with DuckDuckGo. But they have all failed and I always ended up changing the default search engine back to Google. I mean, DDG worked fine for 95% of time, but the remaining 5% failure often led to some extreme frustration that I just couldn't stand. I would imagine Brave Search to have similar issues, at least in the beginning, but they did something smart to make it less painful:
> Brave Search beta is based on an independent index, the first of its kind. However, for some queries, Brave can anonymously check our search results against third-party results, and mix them on the results page.
So, if I am not satisfied with Brave's result, Google's result is on the same page, or just one click away.